Authors: Eloisa James
Duchess in Love
Duchess in Love
A Brief Conversation The Duchess of Girton's Bedchamber
An Encounter Between a Duke, a Piglet, and a Solicitor
Family Politics
Domestic Pleasures
Troubridge Manor, Crammed with Company and Giddy with Grandees
A Meeting of Spouses
The Afflictions of Memory Following Lady Troubridge's Ridotto
In Which Beautiful Men Frolic by the River
A Slab of Pink Marble and a Contemplative Duke
The Fruits of Regret
Improper Shakespeare, in the Library
In Which the Marquess of Bonnington Suffers an Insult
Tasting Rain
The Truth Is Sometimes Displeasing
A Duchess in Dishabille
The Bedchamber of a Spurned Woman
In Which Desire Comes to the Forefront
Houseguests Need Not Rise Before Noon
A Piscatory Discussion on the Riverbank
In Which the Question of Marital Beds and Bedchambers Comes to the Fore
A Scandalized Solicitor
Lady Helene, Countess Godwin, Escapes an Unpleasant Experience in the City
A Brazen Challenge and an Injured Jawbone
The Second Council of War
In Which Mr. Finkbottle Proves Himself a Worthy Employee
Cabined, Cribbed, and Confined, as Hamlet Put It
Lady Troubridge's Plunge-Bath, a Dark but Not Unpleasant Habitat
Mr. Rounton Defends His Heritage
Informal Dancing Followed by Private Intoxication
Courage Is Required: Lord Perwinkle's Bedchamber
Curtain Call
Regret Is a Morning Affair
The Following Afternoon a Solicitor's Creativity Is Deplored
Lady Rawlings Awaits Her Husband
Just Before Dawn
Sometimes a Wife Cannot Be Found
In Which a Duchess Dances for Joy
The Grand Staircase, Girton House
A Brief Conversation
The Duchess of Girton's Bedchamber
Lady Troubridge's House Party
East Cliff
“W
ell, what does he look like?”
There was a pause. “He has black hair, I remember that,” Gina said dubiously. She was sitting at her dressing table and tying a hair ribbon into small knots. Ambrogina, Duchess of Girton, rarely fidgeted.
Duchess is as duchess does,
one of her governesses had insisted. But Gina was panicking. Even duchesses panic, on occasion.
Esme Rawlings burst into laughter. “You don't know what your own husband looks like?”
Gina scowled. “It's easy for you to laugh. Your husband isn't returning from the continent to find you in the midst of a scandal. I've been insisting that Cam annul our marriage so that I can marry Sebastian. After he reads that dreadful bit of gossip in
The Tatler,
he'll think I'm a loose woman.”
“Not if he knows you,” Esme chortled.
“That's just it! He
doesn't
know me. What if he believes the talk about Mr. Wapping?”
“Fire your tutor and it'll blow over in a week.”
“I won't fire poor Mr. Wapping. He came all the way from Greece to be my tutor, and the poor man doesn't have anywhere to go. Besides, he hasn't done anything wrong, and neither have I, so why should I act as if I had?”
“Being seen with your tutor at two in the morning by Willoughby Broke and his wife was not the soundest policy.”
“You know we were simply observing the meteor shower. At any rate, you're not answering me. What if I don't recognize my own husband?” Gina turned around on her stool and fixed her eyes on Esme. “It will be the most humiliating moment of my life!”
“For goodness' sake, you sound like a bad actress in a melodrama. He'll be announced by the butler, won't he? So you'll have time to collect yourself.
Oh my dearest husband,
” Esme said, casting Gina a melting look of welcome.
“What a terrible, terrible sorrow your absence has been to me!”
She began fanning herself languidly.
Gina grimaced at her. “I suppose you employ that sentence frequently?”
“Naturally. Miles and I are always polite, whenever we meet. Which is rare, thank goodness.”
Gina put down the ribbon, now knotted in fifty places. “Look at thisâmy hands are shaking. I don't know anyone who has experienced such a horrendous meeting.”
“You're exaggerating. Think how poor Caroline Pratt felt when she had to tell her husband she was pregnantâand he away in the Low Countries all the previous year!”
“That must have been difficult.”
“Although she really did him a favor. What in God's name would have happened to the estate if she hadn't managed to produce an heir? They have been married over ten years, after all. Pratt should have thanked her very nicely, although
I have no doubt but what he didn't, men being the boors they are.”
“My point is that meeting Cam is going to be prodigiously difficult,” Gina said. “I'm not sure I will know him from Adam.”
“I thought you spent your childhood in his pocket.”
“That's not the same as meeting him as a grown man. He was just a boy when we married.”
“There are plenty of women who would love to see their husbands move to the continent,” Esme pointed out.
“Cam is not really my husband. For goodness' sake, I was raised to think he was my first cousin, until the very day we married.”
“I don't see how that changes things. There are plenty of married first cousins, more's the pity. And you are not truly first cousins, given that your mother merely raised you, as opposed to giving birth to you.”
“Just as my husband is not truly my husband,” Gina added promptly. “Cam jumped out the window within fifteen minutes of his father forcing him to say the vows. It has simply taken him twelve years to return and annul the marriage.”
“At least
my
husband left through the front door like a civilized man.”
“Cam was hardly a man. He turned eighteen only a few days earlier.”
“Well, you look glorious in that rose gown,” Esme said, smiling at Gina. “He'll weep to think that he ever leaped out your bedchamber window.”
“Nonsense. I'm not beautiful. I'm too thin and my hair resembles nothing so much as a carrot.” She peered at herself in the mirror. “I wish I had your eyes, Esme. Mine are the color of mud.”
“Your eyes are not muddy, they're green,” Esme corrected her. “And as for not being beautifulâlook at you! You look
like a Renaissance Madonna today, all slender and composed and a bit teary. Except for your hair, of course. Do you think you inherited all that red hair from your scandalous French
maman
?”
“How should I know? My father refused to describe my real mother.”
“Actually, a Madonna is a perfect description,” Esme continued with a wicked twinkle. “Poor dearâ¦yet another married virgin!”
There was a knock at the door, and Annie, the duchess's maid, answered it. “Lady Perwinkle would like to visit for a moment, Your Grace.”
“Do ask her to come in,” Gina replied.
Carola Perwinkle was small and deliciously rounded, with curls that bounced around her heart-shaped little face. She let out a squeal of delight at the sight of Esme.
“Darlings! I had to come even though it's past time to dress because Lady Troubridge told me the most astounding tale about Gina's husbandâ”
“It's true,” Gina put in. “My husband is returning to England.”
Carola clasped her hands together. “How romantic!”
“How so? I see nothing romantic about my husband annulling our marriage.”
“All the way from Greece, simply to free you, to allow you to marry the man you love? I've no doubt but that his heart is secretly broken at the thought.”
Esme looked faintly nauseated. “Sometimes I can't imagine why I'm friends with you, Carola. My guess is that Gina's husband is outrageously pleased to be getting her off his hands. Your husband and my husband would jump at such a chance of annulment, wouldn't they? Why should Gina's husband be any different?”
“I prefer not to think of it that way,” Carola said, turning
her little nose in the air. “My husband and I may not agree, but he would never annul our marriage.”
“Well, mine would,” Esme said. “He's simply too good-natured to say so. After we first separated, I tried my damnedest to make him angry enough to divorce me, but he was too much of a gentleman. But if annulment were an option, he'd leap at it.”
“You
are
a fool,” Gina said, looking at her affectionately. “You destroyed your reputation just to get Miles's attention?”
Esme smiled ruefully. “Close enough. I can't imagine why you're friends with me, proper duchess that you are.”
“Because I'm getting married, naturally. Whom should I come to for marital advice but you?” Gina had a wicked twinkle in her eye.
“Better Esme than me,” Carola put in, with a little giggle.
“My husband and I parted ways after only a month or so. Whereas Esme didn't separate from hers for over a year.”
“The truth is, you're the one who should be doling out advice, Gina,” Esme said. “Carola and I shucked off our spouses and have spent a good deal of time since blowing up scandals. But you have always behaved like an exemplary married duchess!”
“You make me sound so boring,” Gina protested.
“Well, in comparison to
our
tarnished reputations⦔
“Speak for yourself,” Carola said. “My reputation may be marred but not yet tarnished.”
“Oh well, mine is black enough for all three of us,” Esme said lightly.
Carola was at the door. “I'd best be off if I don't wish to look a proper hag tonight.” She slipped out the door.
Esme jumped from her chair. “I had better fly. Jeannie is planning to dress my hair à la grecque, and I don't wish to be late. Bernie might despair of my arrival.”
“Bernie Burdett? I thought you said that he was a flat bore,” Gina said.
Esme smiled impishly. “I'm not interested in his brain, my dear.”
“You do remember that Lady Troubridge said your husband is arriving today?”
Her response was a shrug. “Of course Miles is coming. Lady Randolph Childe is already here, isn't she?”
Gina bit her lip. “That's only a rumor. Perhaps he wishes to see you.”
Esme's eyes were a blue that had been likened to sapphires by many a young man. They were often just as brilliant and as hard as precious gems. But they softened looking at Gina's face. “You are a truly sweet person, Your Grace.” She stooped and kissed her cheek. “I must go make myself into a femme fatale. It would be hideously uncomfortable if Lady Childe looked better than I.”
“
That
is not possible,” Gina said with utter conviction.
“You're simply fishing for a compliment.” Esme's silky black curls, provocative mouth, and delicious curves had forced comparison with the most beautiful courtesans in London, since her very first season. And generally speaking, she was considered to leave her competition in the dust.
“Weren't
you
fishing for a compliment when you moaned about your muddy-colored eyes?”
Gina flipped her hand at her. “Not the same. Every gentleman I know would grovel to enter your bedroom door. Whereas they just think of me as a straitlaced, skinny duchess.”
Esme snorted. “You're cracked. Try telling Sebastian how homely you are. I'm sure he can wax eloquent about your alabaster brow, etcetera, but I must dress.” Blowing a kiss, she left.
Annie answered Gina's sigh, not the silence. “It's a
shame, that's what it is,” she said, picking up a hairbrush. “There's Lady Rawlings, one of the most beautiful women in the whole of London, and her husband makes no pretense of his relationship with Lady Childe. A shame, that's what.”
Gina nodded.
“You know, her husband requested a room adjoining Lady Childe's,” Annie added.
Gina met her eyes in the mirror, startled. “Really?”
“It's not all that uncommon. More the opposite. Now that I'm an upper servant, Mrs. Massey talks freely before me. And the trouble she and Lady Troubridge have had to go to during this house party, shifting the rooms around, well, you wouldn't believe.”
“Goodness,” Gina said lamely. At least she and Sebastian wouldn't be that kind of couple once they were married. Poor Esme.