Desperate Duchesses

Page 15

“You are too generous in the front,” Brigitte stated, dispelling that dream.
Roberta peered down at her chest. She had nothing compared to the naked centerpiece, after all.
“Is excellent!” Brigitte said hurriedly. “The men, they are most fond of bosoms. Many bosoms!”
Since Brigitte likely didn’t mean that men preferred women with more than two breasts, Roberta took this as a compliment. Unfortunately, her “many bosoms” made many of Jemma’s gowns unacceptable. She overflowed the bodices in a fashion that Brigitte kept declaring sensuelle, rather than innocente.
Suddenly Brigitte clapped her hands. “The white silk moiré!” she announced.
There was a little flurry of conversation. One maid ventured the fact that Jemma had labeled the gown ennuyeuse. “Boring,” Brigitte announced, “is just what is needed.”
“Oh, but—” Roberta said unhappily. This was ignored, as had been every other comment she ventured to make.
It certainly was a lovely dress, embroidered with tiny sprays of flowers that looked as if they’d been scattered by the wind. It showed rather less of her breasts than the others, because the neckline was a V, and trimmed with a small ruffle of white lace. The sleeves were tight and ended in a gorgeous frill. It was exquisite, but Roberta thought that Jemma was right. It was boring.
She had no say in the matter; all the other dresses, luscious in deep crimson and striped green, were whisked away, and Brigitte got down to the serious business of altering the white gown to fit.
“You will look like a fairy princess at the ball,” Brigitte said with great satisfaction. “All the princes will bow at your feet.”
It seemed to Roberta that Villiers was not the sort to bow at the feet of an innocent fairy princess, but how could she complain? He wouldn’t genuflect at the feet of the fleshy crocodile dressed in gold paint either; she was certain of that. She would have to study him closely in order to decide precisely how to pitch her courtship.
By the time Roberta made it out of her bedchamber it was late in the afternoon. Her father’s house was large, but Beaumont House was far larger. Within the turn of a corridor, she was lost.
Part of the problem was that she wasn’t concentrating on finding her way. Perhaps Jemma was right. An innocent dress was like a suit of armor, insuring that no one would remember that the Mad Marquess lived with his courtesan, which meant that she, Roberta, had lived in close proximity with that same woman. On the whole, Roberta felt that her friendships with her father’s companions had been interesting. But obviously, one might not wish to trumpet those acquaintances around a ballroom.
She had climbed another flight of stairs, and was wandering down a sun-lit corridor lined with closed doors, which she thought might be taking her back to the central part of the house, when she heard a patter of feet.
He burst around the corner going as fast as only a small boy can go.
Roberta guessed immediately that this was Damon’s son, and decided there was no call to halt him. So she moved aside so that he could use the rest of the corridor as a race course, if he wished. But he skidded to a stop next to her.
Pop went his thumb into his mouth.
Roberta shuddered inwardly. She had had very little contact with children in her life, but she’d seen thumb-sucking in church. The very fact that someone would want to suck on a saliva-covered digit was disgusting.
He was staring up at her, so she smiled. He wasn’t a terrible-looking child, just tousled. It seemed that no one had brushed his hair. Of course, there was no nanny.
“Feel free to continue running,” she advised him.
He just stared. And sucked.
So she continued to walk. He walked right along beside her.
“What’s your name?” she asked, trying to be friendly.
“Teddy,” he said. In order to answer he took his thumb out with a “pop.”
Roberta shuddered again. Enough polite conversation.
But a moment later he dropped the thumb of his own volition and said, “Whatcha doing?”
“Walking,” she said.
“It’s running, I am,” he said.
“I am running,” she corrected him. Perhaps that was a bit harsh, but after life with her father she had very little sympathy for inverted syntax, poetic or otherwise.
“Right,” he said. At least he didn’t start sucking again. But he suddenly waxed eloquent. “Don’t have a nanny.”
“I don’t have a nanny,” she repeated.
“Right. The nanny, her name was Peg—”
“The nanny’s name was Peg.”
“Yes, her name was Peg and her brother was sent to Bridewell Prison because he stole a sow and her piglets and then he stole a butter churn and put the piglets in it.”
He paused, but Roberta had no comment about the butter churn or the piglets, and his sentence was reasonably grammatical.
So they continued like that down the hall and around the curve, with Roberta occasionally interjecting a grammatical comment, and Teddy telling her at length about various criminal deeds. Some of his stories were rather involved and, had Roberta not had a great deal of experience in decoding cryptic literature, might have been misinterpreted.
“Do I understand you to say,” she said some time later, “that the housemaid with the beard, whose name is Carper, is married to a wild bog-trotting croggie, whatever that is, but she has a child by a Captain Longshanks?”
Teddy corrected her. Apparently Carper had a mustache as well, and the signal point of his story was that she had more facial hair than the captain.
To Roberta, the more interesting point was the wild bog-trotting croggie.
Teddy admitted that he couldn’t describe Carper’s husband, but launched into a tale of Carper’s sister, who bought an ointment entitled the Tomb of Venus, which gave her a terrible swelling.
“A dire name. She should have chosen something more propitious.”
After she had explained the meaning of dire and propitious, and finally, tomb, Teddy said that the swelling was all in front, and Carper said that it was an ill-prepared medicine and that Dr. Jackson’s worm powder would have been better.
Finally she saw the great winding stair leading down the central core of the house, so she told Teddy to run off to his nursery.
He blinked up at her and then popped his thumb back in his mouth.
“You’re too old for that,” she told him. “Why, you must be ten years old at the very least.”
“Six,” he said around his thumb.
“It’s a disgusting habit,” she said. “There are those who take worm powder and rub it in children’s thumbs and after that they never put them in their mouths again.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“Shoo,” she said. “Or I’ll tell your father about worm powder.”
He ran.
Chapter 6
“A n intimate family supper,” Jemma said with obvious satisfaction. “How I missed this while in Paris!”
She was sitting at the head of the table, looking as enticing as a French bird of paradise and not at all like a good huswife. Damon grinned at her. “Domesticity is a new affectation for you.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Beaumont, do you find that age is reconciling you to domesticity? You used to dine at home very rarely.”