The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister) (31 page)

“Well?” she demanded. “Pour the tea.”

Minnie did and then, at the duchess’s direction, added sugar.

As she did, her great-aunts stole looks back and forth, as if silently arguing with one another about whether they should intervene. But the duchess paid them no mind. She took a piece of toast—slightly burnt—and set it on her plate.

Minnie handed her the cup and saucer. She took a sip and then set it down, as if by so doing she’d satisfied the demands of good manners. “And here I thought you had some sense, Miss Pursling.”

“I do. Are you here to browbeat me again?”

The duchess shook her head. “Only the most deluded, romantic woman who found herself in my position would suppose that throwing a tantrum at her son’s bride-to-be would alter the outcome. You know the risks. My son knows the truth. I made my best offer and it wasn’t enough. The world rarely cares for my inclinations. When matters don’t go my way, there’s only one thing to do.” So saying, she lifted the toast and took a dainty bite.

“What is that?” Minnie asked.

The duchess swallowed her bite with a small frown, set down the toast, and then stirred her tea. “Do you like cats, Miss Pursling?”

Minnie blinked at this turn to the conversation. “I am fond of them, although I wish Pouncer would stop leaving mouse livers on my bed.”

The duchess waved away rodent innards with one lace glove. “Have you ever seen a cat apologize, or admit it was in the wrong?”

“Cats don’t talk,” Caro put in, her first words for the morning.

The duchess looked up, glaring at her. “A woman capable of keeping her infamous grand-niece in safety for a decade can surely bring herself to understand a little figurative speech.” She turned back to Minnie. “Have you ever seen a cat attempt to pounce on a target, and miss?”

“Of course.”

“And what does the cat do?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It acts as if it
intended
to miss. ‘Yes,’ it says, ‘I let that one go as a warning to all the others. Now I shall lick my paws for the next five minutes, precisely as I had planned.’”

“It
says
that?” Minnie asked innocently.

“Figuratively speaking. My point is, be the cat. Everyone respects a cat.”

“Well, actually,” Eliza said, “in the time of the Black Plague—”

The duchess extended a hand. “Do not pollute my perfectly acceptable figurative speech with irrelevant facts!” she thundered. “There is no need for those.” She focused on Minnie once more. “Now, I have decided that you and my son must honeymoon in Paris.”

This abrupt change of subject had Minnie shaking her head. “That seems…
romantic
. Are you sure?”

“Exactly,” the duchess said. “It
seems
romantic, and as little as I approve of the actual existence of romance, I am well aware that you will need the
appearance
of it very badly.” She pursed her lips and then looked at the wall.

If Minnie hadn’t known better, she would have thought that the woman looked embarrassed. She finally spoke again—for the first time, not looking directly at Minnie.

“Second,” she said, “you might consider not consummating the marriage.”

“What? Why? So it can be annulled?”

The duchess rolled her eyes. “That is a horrid myth. You cannot annul a marriage for simple lack of consummation. Trust me; I have consulted every lawyer in London as to the ways in which one might end a marriage. I know the law to an inch. I merely think it best if your first child did not come until at least ten or eleven months after the marriage. Let nobody think that you married because you were pregnant. They
will
talk, otherwise. For decades.”

“Is that more of your figurative speech again?” Caro put in.

“Experience,” the duchess said grimly. “Robert was an eight-month baby.”

Minnie choked and shut her eyes, trying to expunge the implications from her mind.

“He was early,” the duchess said calmly. “First children often are. I have said so every day for the last twenty-eight years, and so it must be true.” She fixed Minnie with a glare. “So you’ll refrain from marital relations for a good two months.”

“I will not,” Minnie said. “I have no inclination to refrain from something I want to do merely because people I have never met might assume the worst about me. Besides, given my past, it’s rather like a murderer worrying that he might go to hell for saying unkind things about a friend’s horse.”

“Hmm.” The duchess frowned and then shrugged. “Well. I was only testing you. I had to make sure that with your background, you took an interest in men. Better to find out such things now.”

She looked certain. She sounded certain. And yet Minnie had the distinct impression of a cat licking its paws.
I didn’t really want that mouse.

“Speaking of which, the most important reason to go to Paris.” The duchess pointed at Minnie. “You need a new wardrobe. You cannot do with just
acceptable
. You must be brilliant. So tell me, girl, do you prefer to dress like a drab little peasant, or do you wear stomach-turning garb simply because your impoverished great-aunts force you to it?”

On the other side of the table, Caro and Eliza gasped in unison. Minnie coughed. “Absolutely. Nothing pleases me more than turning a gown for the fourth time! If my cuffs aren’t falling apart, I don’t feel truly at home.” She glared at the other woman. “I’ll thank you not to insult the women who gave me a home when they were not obligated to do so. Insult me all you wish, but leave Caro and Eliza out of it.”

The duchess didn’t blink an eye at this. “What do you think of my style of dress?”

“Too fussy, too conservative,” Minnie said without blinking. “It does very well for you, I suppose, but for me—”

“Excellent. What would you pick out for yourself? What sort of duchess would you be?”

Years of looking over fashion plates with Lydia hit her with a sharp sense of loss, one that seemed like a staggering blow. She should have been picking out her wedding trousseau with Lydia, who would have been crowing that she was
right…

“Well,” Minnie said, “I won’t pretend to be a conventional duchess. I don’t like those layers of lace, no matter how popular they are now. I’d feel positively buried in them. I’d want clean lines, bright fabrics.” She let out a breath, imagining. “Lots of fabric. No more skimping.”

“And you’ll need to learn to cover your scar. My girl will be able to—”

Minnie turned to the other woman and gave her a repressive look. “This?” she said, touching her cheek. “Oh, no. I
intended
to get that. I consider it a beauty scar.”

The duchess gave a crack of laughter and stood abruptly.

Minnie stared at her.

“Well?” the other woman said crossly. “We haven’t got all day. I’ve all the fashion magazines at my hotel. If we wire your measurements to my people in France, they can do the final fittings the hour you arrive. And there’s still a good deal that can be purchased here.”

“You…came all the way here solely to take me
shopping?”
Minnie asked.

“Once you are the Duchess of Clermont,” the other woman said, not acknowledging her question, “never let anyone know you could be anything else. If you don’t hear what they say about you, it can’t possibly be true. By the time society discovers your existence, you’ll have to already be a duchess.”

Chapter Twenty-one

T
HE DAYS UNTIL
R
OBERT’S WEDDING
sped by all too quickly. Robert didn’t know whether to be excited or apprehensive. He felt both. For one, his mother had taken Minnie under her wing and had sent for a seamstress from London to provide what she said were “basic essentials.”

When he asked, she brushed him off with a tart, “If you’re going to throw the girl to the wolves, it’s only appropriate to outfit her with a red cloak.”

Then there were those moments they stole together. He’d had a few kisses to whet his appetite—if you could call it
just
a kiss when he’d pushed her against the wall and unbuttoned her gown half down her front. By the morning of his wedding, his appetite was sharp indeed.

In one sense, it was lucky that their ceremony was early. In reality, the extremely early hour had been chosen specifically so that they would be able to make the journey to Paris by the end of the day. If that early-morning mail train was not late into London, if the steamer made it across the Channel in good time…

But he couldn’t think of any of that as he looked in her eyes and spoke his vows. It wasn’t just physical desire that had him so on edge. When she promised to love him, to comfort him, he felt an electric thrill that ran down his whole body. And when he promised the same, it seemed to seal them together, to bridge the distance between them in a way that even the kiss that followed could not.

He knew that many of his compatriots avoided marriage at all costs. They saw matrimony as an annoyance, a wife as another person who would nag and prod. But when he repeated his vows, he heard “as long as we both shall live” and he hoped.

After the ceremony, they separated briefly. Minnie went with her great-aunts to gather up a few things; Robert oversaw the loading of baggage. It was only half an hour later that they met again at the train station. They had no chance to speak as they boarded. Robert shook his brother’s hand and then his cousin’s. Violet gave him an embrace, and his mother… She inclined her head to him. They waved from the window of the car until the station disappeared into the countryside.

“Whose idea was it,” Robert whispered in her ear, “to put a sixteen-hour journey between the ceremony and the consummation of the marriage?”

“Mine. I think.” She half-turned to him, and he caught a glimpse of her face. She didn’t look eager for what was to come; she looked unhappy. She glanced back out the window almost longingly, at the silhouettes of the town receding in the distance. All the buildings blurred together into gray stone and a forest of brick chimneys. Not so much to miss, that.

And then Robert recalled that she had two great-aunts who loved her, and that he was taking her away from them.

“Give me a moment,” she said. “I’ll be right as rain in a little while. I just thought—I really thought that Lydia would come to my wedding.”

It took him a moment to remember who
Lydia
must be—Miss Charingford, the friend who had always been at her side.

“I sent her a letter telling her everything, absolutely everything about me. I asked her to come. I thought she’d see me off at least,” she said. “But she didn’t even send a note.”

He’d been about to suggest that they spend the journey readying themselves for their hotel bed in Paris. But there was no place for cheerful lewdness here. Instead, he touched her hand gently, afraid to say anything that might worsen her mood.

But she hadn’t been lying when she said she’d need only a while to recover. By the time they reached London, she was smiling again. “You know,” she said, “the last time I was in Paris, I was eight. Back then, travel to the Continent took days.” She shook her head. “Days to get anywhere at all.”

“I didn’t go to the Continent until I reached my majority,” Robert said. “So I’ve only known the days when train and steamer took us everywhere.”

They reached London by ten thirty, Southampton just after noon, and stood on French soil by three that afternoon. True to Minnie’s word, all hint of her unhappiness had vanished. She watched everything with interest, smiled as if nothing was wrong…and, when they got into the final train car for the day, leaned her head against his shoulder in a display of idle affection that had him holding his breath and thinking of very cold icicles applied directly to his thigh.

Good thing that he hadn’t suggested they try more. Just the feeling of her hand entwined in his had him wondering if he was going to ravish his wife for the first time while hurtling down the tracks.

No. He was going to ravish her in a hotel room. On a bed. And it was going to be incredible.

It was going to be incredible, he repeated to himself when they arrived in Paris.

He repeated it again, with gritted teeth, when he found out that his mother had arranged a fitting for Minnie upon her arrival—an hour-long delay at nine in the bloody evening, before dinner, on the night of his marriage.

By the time they found themselves seated at an intimate meal together, Minnie in a heavily brocaded robe that covered her from neck to toe, it was eleven at night. He picked moodily at his food; she did the same. They dismissed the servants after the second course; Minnie claimed not to be hungry and set down her silverware.

She stood.

It was almost midnight. They’d been traveling most of the day; for most of the day, he’d been on edge thinking of what he would get to do tonight. And now, tonight was here.

“Minnie,” he said slowly. “After today’s tiring journey, I thought we might—”

She undid the tie of her robe and let it fall to the ground, and the remainder of his sentence vanished.

“You thought we might?” she inquired, smiling at him.