Duchess By Night

Page 3

But Harriet was tucked in a chair at the side of the ballroom, and Isidore had her eyes fixed on the man she was seducing, though seducing wasn’t quite the appropriate word. Harriet had the idea that Isidore was chaste. Just bored. And Harriet couldn’t possibly catch her attention. She felt invisible; she certainly seemed to be invisible to most of the men in the room.
Widows dressed as Mother Goose were not as much in demand as half-naked queens, no matter how much stuffing their bodices contained. What little cloth existed in Isidore’s bodice was thickly embroidered with peacock feathers, the eyes picked out in jewels.
In short, peacock eyes were more popular than goose eyes. Lord Beesby, for example, didn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off of Isidore’s bodice, whereas Harriet’s goose put men off. It was lying beside her, head drooping off the chair so that its beady eyes stared at the floor.
Isidore twirled again, hands in the air. A lock of hair fell from her elaborate arrangement. The dancers nearby paused in their own steps, entranced by the sway of her hips. There was something so un-English about Isidore’s curves, her scarlet lips, the way she was smiling at Beesby as if he were the king himself. It had to be her Italian ancestry. Most Englishwomen looked—and felt—like Harriet herself: dumpy. Maternal.
Though she, Harriet, had no reason to feel maternal, given her lack of children. At this point, the only man likely to approach her would be called Georgie Porgie.
Harriet bit her lip. She’d welcome Georgie Porgie. Who knew it was just as humiliating to sit out dances when one is widowed, as when one first entered the marriage market? Yet another one of life’s charming surprises.
Lord Beesby was dancing as he had never danced before. One hand still in the air like a gypsy king, he capered and pranced before his partner, his knees rising higher and higher. He reminded Harriet of nothing so much as her beloved spaniel, Mrs. Custard. If Beesby had a tail, he’d be wagging it with pure bliss. He was rapt, enchanted, in love. According to the pattern of the dance, he should have long ago moved to another partner, but he and Isidore had—scandalously—eschewed exchanging partners, and the dance had continued without them.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Harriet caught a glimpse of an irate-looking Lady Beesby making her way toward the couple. Isidore’s bodice was at the very point of disaster. Harriet jumped to her feet, caught Isidore’s eye, and jerked her head in the direction of Lady Beesby.
Isidore flashed one look at the matron heading toward her, drew back, and shouted, “Lord Beesby, you do me wrong!”
Caught in a dream, Lord Beesby didn’t hear and circled blissfully, one more time.
Isidore bellowed something else; Lord Beesby started blinking and stopped short in the midst of a turn. Isidore’s hand flashed out and she slapped him.
The entire ballroom went stone silent. “You led me to believe that you found me attractive!” Isidore shrieked, with all the bravado of an Italian opera singer. “How dare you spurn me after presenting me with such temptation!”
Jemma appeared from nowhere and wrapped an arm around Isidore’s waist. “Alas, Lord Beesby is a man of high moral fiber,” she said, with magnificent emphasis.
“Oh, how shall I recover!” Isidore cried, casting a drooping hand to her brow.
Jemma swept her off the dance floor. Harriet barely stopped herself from applauding.
Lord Beesby was still standing there, mouth agape, when his wife reached his side. Harriet thought she looked at him with a measure of new respect. It was one thing to have one’s husband making a fool of himself on the dance floor with a gorgeous young woman. It was another to have that same husband spurn the wench in a public arena.
Lady Beesby even smiled at her husband, which had to be the first such affectionate gesture in days. Perhaps years. Then she spun on her heel and marched off the dance floor, her smaller, bemused husband trailing after her. It reminded Harriet of when her fat sow Rebecca would suddenly march off in indignation. Rebecca generally trailed at least one piglet behind her. Or—Harriet stopped.
Her thoughts were made up of spaniels and piglets. She was so tedious that she bored herself. She was countrified, tedious, and melancholic.
She could feel her eyes getting dangerously hot. But she was tired of tears. Benjamin had died over two years ago. She’d wept when he died, and after. Wept more than she thought it was possible for a human body to cry. Wept, she realized now, from a mixture of grief and rage and mortification.
But her husband was gone, and she was still here.
Dressing in Mother Goose costumes wouldn’t bring him back. Sitting like a mouse at the side of the ballroom wouldn’t bring him back. Nothing would bring him back.
Yet what could she do? Widows were supposed to be dignified. Not only that, but she was a duchess. Given that Benjamin’s nephew, the current Duke of Berrow, was only eleven years old and still at Eton, she wasn’t even a dowager duchess. She was a duchess and a widow and a twenty-seven-year-old woman: and which of those three terms was the most depressing she couldn’t even decide.
She swallowed hard. Could she bear to spend the rest of her life growing paler, as her hair faded and her shoulders stooped? Would she merely watch other women seduce and entice, while she mused about fat piglets and loyal spaniels? A dog, no matter how loyal, is only a dog.
She couldn’t spend the rest of her life clinging to the sides of ballrooms, dressed as the mother she wasn’t and never would be.
She had to do something. Change her life! Start thinking about—
About—
Pleasure.
The word popped into her mind unexpectedly and stayed there, with all the gracious coolness of a drop of cool rain on a blistering day. Isidore was obviously enjoying herself, flirting with Beesby. He loved their dance.
Pleasure.
She could think about pleasure.
Her pleasure.
Chapter Three
In Which the Geography of Pleasure is Dissected
H arriet found the Duchess of Beaumont and the Duchess of Cosway—i.e, Jemma and Isidore—in a small parlor after a dismaying search of other rooms. Every alcove held a pair of heads, male and female. Every settee featured people paired off like robins in spring. Or, since it was a costume party, like a sailor and the Queen of Sheba.
She pasted a cheery Mother Goose type of smile on her face and kept saying mindless things like “Oh, very sorry! Right then, I’ll just—just move along, shall I?” The sailor didn’t even look up when she walked into the yellow salon. His head bent over the Queen of Sheba’s with such tenderness and possession that Harriet felt as if her heart would break in two.
She and Benjamin never…of course not. They had been a married couple, hadn’t they? Married couples didn’t kiss at balls.
But had Benjamin ever kissed her like that? He used to kiss her in a brisk, affectionate manner. The way she kissed her spaniel.
“You saved me!” Isidore cried when Harriet finally located Jemma and Isidore in a small sitting room. “Lady Beesby would have eaten me for breakfast.”
“Darling, come and sit beside me; I’m feeling blue,” Jemma said, peering around the side of her chair. They were seated around the fire.
Harriet rounded the little circle and halted. Her least favorite acquaintance in the world, the Duke of Villiers, lay on a settee just to the left of the hearth. He was recovering from an infection caused by a dueling wound, and his face was angular and pale. Even so, one look at him made her feel every inch an unattractive, dumpy widow. His dressing gown was made of Italian silk, dark lavender embroidered with a delicate border of black tulips. It was exquisite, unexpected, and utterly beautiful.