Desperate Duchesses

Page 30

Brigitte clasped her hands together. “The blue one, Your Grace, with the black lace?”
Jemma smiled at her. “It is yours in return for a small act of espionage, which I am convinced you will enjoy.”
She trembled with excitement. “Enchantée!” Brigitte said, eyes aglow.
“Villiers comes to play a game of chess with me. He will be accompanied by footmen, naturally.”
Brigitte nodded.
“I should dearly love to know every detail of une petite affaire he had with a certain Lady Caroline Killigrew, who found herself with child.”
“Quelle folie,” Brigitte said, indicating with a Frenchwoman’s briskness just what she thought of Lady Caroline’s foolishness in not controlling her reproductive options.
“There has been a certain amount of gossip suggesting that Villiers went through a false wedding ceremony with the young lady.”
Brigitte’s loyalty switched sides instantly. “Chien!” she spat.
“Perhaps…perhaps not. There are so many sides to a tale, are there not? We need to know everything of Lady Caroline.”
Brigitte dimpled. “I will do my best.”
Before a Frenchwoman’s best, an English footman is but a house of straw. “I shall accept two gentlemen to help me dress, Brigitte. Corbin, of course, and perhaps…oh, Viscount St. Albans. He was wearing a truly magnificent costume last night and ought to be rewarded.”
Brigitte curtsied and flew down the stairs to find St. Albans and Lord Corbin, who were ushered up the stairs and into the duchess’s bedchamber, where they found Jemma attired in a chemise and corset, ready for the gentlemen’s skill in helping her answer delicate points to do with patches, powder, ribbons and finally her gown.
Roberta awoke to find herself in a room that looked like a copy of her original, except for the faint imprint of Damon’s personality. There was a cravat flung over a chair. A book sat on the dressing table; Roberta wandered over, saw the name John Donne and dropped the poems with a thud. His clothes were in the wardrobe, of course.
He had a magnificent costume of cherry velvet lined in cream sarsenet. Taking the coat to the window, she could see metal sequins, sewn into elaborate patterns with silver embroidery. Even looking at it made her heart twist with longing. And desire. She had to marry Villiers soon, so that she could buy a gown in precisely this cherry color with sequins.
There was a scratch at the door and Roberta hastily dropped the coat onto the bed. But as the door opened, she didn’t see her maid. In fact, she didn’t see anyone until the door closed again and Teddy appeared around the end of her bed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said by way of greeting.
“Gotta apologize, my papa says.”
“My papa says—appropriately—that I should apologize,” Roberta corrected him.
He grinned at her. “Brought you—I brought you a present.”
Roberta summoned up a smile. Of course she ought to be touched by whatever grubby, bent flower he was about to produce from under his coat.
It wasn’t a flower, but a struggling, spitting kitten. She felt no inclination to take it from him.
“Perhaps you’d better put it down,” she said after the charming feline gave Teddy another red welt across his hand.
He dropped it and the kitten landed on its splayed-out feet with a rather pitiful mew of protest and then streaked under the bed.
“It was much nicer when it was in the shed,” Teddy said, with an edge of apology in his voice. “I thought you might like it. Since you have to sleep alone. Cats are good company.”
“I like sleeping alone,” Roberta informed him.
He wandered over. “That’s Papa’s French coat,” he said. “France is in Paris.”
“Paris is in France,” she said. “You need to retrieve that kitten and take it back to its mother.”
“It’s yours now. Besides, I wanted to tell you about the gardener, he works in the gardens and—”
“The gardener works in the gardens,” Roberta said automatically, moving over to pull the cord.
“His name is Rummer and he used to be a prize-fighter. Rummer used to stroddle his opponents and once he almost spent five guineas for a wife—”
“For a wife?” Roberta said, rather startled by that. She had seated herself before the dressing table and began brushing out her hair.
“Yes, indeed. Rummer was at a fair in Smithfield and a man was auctioning his wife, and he wanted five guineas to start, and Rummer thought about it hard, but then he decided that the life of a prize-fighter was no place for a wife because”—Teddy finished triumphantly—“lady’s gowns are pinned so high these days that you can’t see their heads for their tails.” And he broke into a mad fit of giggling, and repeated the head and tail part two or three times for the pure naughty value of it.
Roberta just kept brushing. It was rather sad to think about the wife auctioned off for five guineas, but when questioned, Teddy didn’t know her fate, only that Rummer hadn’t bought her.
“That’s two things you need to discover,” Roberta told him. “What happened to the wife, and what a bog-trotting croggie is.”
“I likes you!” he said, beaming up at her. “I likes you—”
“Like you,” Roberta said.
“I like you because you listen to me. Papa says that I’m a gossip who could out-rattle fifty porters.”
“I agree with him.” Finally there was a knock at the door and she called, “Enter. I didn’t know it was you,” she said rather crossly.
“Papa, look at this,” Teddy said. “The lady’s new kitten likes your red coat.”
Sure enough, the kitten had clawed its way up on the bed and was nestled in velvet with silver embroidery.
“I’m not dressed,” Roberta said with dignity. “I’ll thank you to take your son out of this room—once again—and allow me to continue dressing.”
He raised an eyebrow. “At this very moment my sister is undoubtedly entertaining at least two gentlemen in her chambers as they aid her in choosing the day’s costume. Why don’t Teddy and I do the honors?”
Roberta realized she still had her brush in the air and put it down in exasperation. Teddy had picked up the kitten, who actually seemed to be purring.
“I very much doubt that your sister is allowing gentlemen into her bedchamber while she’s”—Roberta glanced down to make sure that her dressing gown was still tied tightly—“en déshabillé.”
“But that’s precisely the fashion these days,” he said, taking a chair and swinging it about so that he could sit on it facing her. “It would be a dismal thing indeed for a lady to dress herself. Generally one has a maid or two in the room as well. They throw the clothes on you, while Teddy and I advise you where to place a patch, if you wish one, and face color, and ribbons—that sort of thing.”
“I do not believe that unmarried ladies invite gentlemen into their rooms while they dress. And I don’t wish to wear a patch!” Roberta said, feeling rather discomposed. She prided herself on her lack of naïveté, but she was beginning to realize that being sophisticated in comparison to Mrs. Grope was nothing in relation to the Reeve family.