Duchess By Night

Page 20

She handed over the book.
Harriet skipped over the poem marked “A Man’s Yard.” She couldn’t see Strange being intrigued by a bawdy poem about a man’s pole, no matter how cleverly it rhymed.
The following page was a song called “Walking in a Meadow Green.” It seemed there were lots of primroses in that meadow, but also a lass and a lad lying together.
Fine, except…
The lad performed once…the lass wanted more. Harriet could hardly believe what she was reading. “Yet still she lies, and to him cries, ‘Once More!’”
It was like reading about a different world than the one she had inhabited during her marriage. In fact, the contrast made her smile. What on earth would Benjamin have done if she lay under him and cried, “Once more!” She couldn’t even imagine it.
And…why would she say that? The way she’d always understood it, it was men who wanted to make love over and over.
It wasn’t that marital intimacies were unpleasant. She always enjoyed it. She loved being with Benjamin, and every time she could pry him away from the chess board felt like a personal victory.
She shook away that thought and turned the page again, to find another poem about a penis, and then a third. She was starting to think that men mostly wanted to hear songs about their own accoutrements, when she finally found a song for a woman’s voice. “His lips like the ruby, his cheeks like the rose, He tempts all fair maids wherever he goes.”
Strange certainly didn’t have cheeks like a rose, but he did seem to be tempting all the maidens. Not that Nell was a maiden, of course. And neither was Harriet. It was just…for some reason, she couldn’t stop looking at him if he was in the room.
Earlier, when he suddenly appeared in the door of her bedchamber, her heart had started beating so quickly that she thought it might be visible. Even his voice seemed deeper, huskier, than other men’s were. That wicked voice, combined with the stark intelligence in his eyes…
As far as Harriet went, put the voice and eyes together and it was far more tempting than a man with cheeks like a rose.
She kept reading. What the lass said she wanted to do to—and with—her lover made Harriet’s heart start beating fast again.
No wonder Villiers thought she was a tiresome old woman when he touched her—and she slapped him. According to these verses, women kissed men everywhere and they returned the favor. All he’d done was touch her.
Still, the song was unlikely to tempt Strange. All this bawdy, silly talk about women’s and men’s privates was fun, but she thought of the look on his face when he danced with Sophia Grafton and shook her head.
It would have to be a great deal more sophisticated than this. More enticing. More erotic.
If she were writing the letter for herself…
The very thought made her whole body prickle.
If she were writing a letter to entice Strange, she would pitch it toward his intelligence. Make it intriguing, rather than erotic. She could picture him opening her letter, puzzling over it.
She would make him wait. He was a man who’d had too many things—women—given to him too easily. She would lead him on a dance of temptation and desire. She would—
Harriet snapped out of her daydream. What on earth was she thinking? She was at Strange’s party dressed as a man! Not to mention the fact that she was a staid duchess, even though she didn’t feel like it at the moment. She had no business falling into salacious fantasies about her host, no matter how much she…
She went to sleep with rhyming words in her head: delight and night. Even, salaciously: little and prickle.
She went to sleep smiling.
Chapter Twelve
In Which Manhood is Achieved…Albeit With Some Discomfort
February 6, 1784
H arriet dreamed that she was dancing. She was wearing her male clothing, which meant that she could move far more gracefully than in skirts and hoops. She was dancing with Benjamin, so she said to him: “Why didn’t you ever ask me to ride on your prickle?”
He laughed at that, and said, “What? What’s that?”
She was trying to explain when he slipped away with a friendly wave, walked through the doors to the balcony outside the ballroom.
“Wait,” she said, “I’m coming too. I want to talk. I want—”
A hand gave her shoulder a brisk shake. She opened her eyes, looked up, and uttered a little scream.
“Time to get up, youngster,” Strange said.
“Yip,” Harriet managed, and pulled the quilt to her neck.
“I exercise in the morning, so if I’m going to teach you fencing, I’d rather do it now. But I thought we could go for a ride first.” He turned around and walked to the windows, throwing open the curtains. “Where’s your valet? Do you always sleep away the morning?”
“What time is it?” Harriet stammered.
“Almost six on a gorgeous cold morning. It’s a woman’s trick to sleep away the morning, Cope.”
“Ah—right,” Harriet said, remembering to lower her voice.
“Your valet?”
“The Duke of Villiers has been kind enough to share his man with me.”
“For God’s sake, Villiers couldn’t pick up an extra manservant for you? I’m sure I could find—”
“There’s no need,” Harriet said hastily. “Really. I have a valet at home but he broke his arm and couldn’t attend me so this is just for a short period of time and it’s not an inconvenience to the duke.”
Strange shrugged and walked to the door. “I’ll see you downstairs in ten minutes. We’re missing the light.”
Light? Light? What on earth was he talking about? Harriet pushed back the covers and shivered. It was February, after all, and a quick look out the window showed bundles of snow and a lowering, gray dawn. She fled through the door into Isidore’s room.
“Isidore! Wake up! Strange is taking me riding.”
Isidore sat up for a moment, stared at her, fell back down and rolled over, pillow on her head. Harriet pulled Isidore’s bell cord to summon Lucille.
Lucille bundled her into a pair of buckram breeches that buttoned tightly at the knees, and then a riding coat. “Why are the jacket flaps buttoned back like that?” Harriet asked, craning to see her rear in the glass. At least her bottom would not be in evidence. Last night she kept edging around the corners of the room so that no one saw her from behind.
“So you can flip them up when you sit on the saddle,” Lucille said. She was wrestling with a pair of boot garters. Suddenly she looked up. “Oh, Your Grace, you’re going to have to sit astride!”
“That’s all right,” Harriet said. “I did it as a girl once.”
“It looks perilously dangerous to me. What’s to stop you from sliding right off the end of the horse? All right, I’m ready for you to put these boots on.”
Harriet stamped into the boots. They were heavy, with a turned-over top. “Now these garters,” Lucille muttered to herself, “they fix to the boot and then pass round the leg over the breeches, like this. I think.”
Harriet looked in the mirror. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Lucille said. “But that’s what Finchley, Villiers’s valet, said to do. He’s a terribly knowledgeable man, you know.”