Duchess By Night

Page 8

“Will you ever fall in love, Papa?” Eugenia asked, resting her head back against his shoulder so she could look up at him.
“I’m in love with you, poppet,” he said. “That’s enough for one man.”
“The house is full of beautiful women,” she observed.
“I suppose so.”
“Many of them would like it if you fell in love with them.”
“Unfortunately, these kinds of things can’t be arranged on demand.”
“Mama would have liked it if you fell in love.”
He snorted. “How could you possibly know, given that your mother died before you knew her?”
“She and I are very similar,” Eugenia said without hesitation. “She would like precisely what I like. And I think you would be happier if you had someone of your own, Papa.”
“Falling in love is merely a way of getting something you desire,” Jem told her. “Like a silver box. If I want an ornament, I’ll buy it.”
“Mrs. Mahon probably can’t afford to buy silver boxes,” Eugenia observed. “She has a beautiful muff, but her shoes are quite shabby.”
“A perfect case in point. She falls in love in order to get herself silver boxes. Luckily, I can afford all the silver boxes I want.”
“There’s more to love than that,” Eugenia said, wiggling happily. There was nothing that Eugenia Strange loved more than a lively discussion in which she bent her wits and argumentative skills against those of her papa. “You are focusing on finances, which is a weakness of yours.”
“What should I focus on?” Jem asked cautiously. While he had early on established his child-rearing practices as promoting a clear-headed sensibility in his daughter, he wasn’t sure that he wanted her clarity to include bedroom matters. Not at this age. And certainly not if he had to explain them.
“Love is a matter of the heart,” Eugenia said. “Shakespeare says that nothing should stand between true lovers.”
“We agreed that you wouldn’t quote Shakespeare to me for at least a month,” Jem pointed out.
“I didn’t quote. I merely condensed.”
“I’m not certain that Mrs. Mahon is talking about that kind of love,” he said, more cautiously still.
“Well, of course, Mrs. Mahon is a concubine. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that she occasionally plays the concubine,” Eugenia said promptly.
“Waa—”
“I see her as a character in a play. There’s an old play called Cupid’s Revenge in the library, and a very naughty woman named Bacha says in Act One that she means to ‘embrace sin as it were a friend, and run to meet it.’”
Jem started thinking about some suggestions he might give Eugenia’s governess as regards reading materials the next time he saw her.
But Eugenia didn’t even pause for breath. “Mrs. Mahon is embracing sin as a friend. Because really, what else can she do? She must eat.”
“And get more silver boxes,” Jem said, unable to resist.
“Love is not about sin, precisely,” Eugenia told him. “And it’s definitely not about silver boxes. To think about love, we need to consider my governess, in love with the beetle-browed footman. Because love is blind, Papa.”
“That’s a quote! We said no quotes.”
“It’s an aphorism,” she corrected him. “It happens to have been repeated in many plays, but its provenance is unknown.”
The good news was that the governess was obviously earning her salary, since his daughter was nimbly using words like provenance. The bad news…“The only time I ever fell in love was with your mother, poppet. And that only occurred because my parents forced the marriage. So you’ll have to discard the idea of dancing at my wedding.”
“You simply haven’t met the right woman,” his daughter told him.
“As you said, the house is full of beautiful women. Loads of them.”
“Beauty is not everything, Papa.”
Jem looked down at his daughter’s oddly angular little face. “But I don’t want to fall in love. It is my observation that only people who wish to fall in love do so. A case in point: your governess developed an affection for me, but transferred it promptly to a hairy footman when the opportunity presented itself.”
“That makes a great deal of sense,” his daughter said, after a moment.
It was a sad reflection on his life, Jem thought, that he was most thrilled by praise from an eight-year-old.
“However,” Eugenia said, rallying, “perhaps you simply don’t know what you want. That’s a common state of mankind. While the playwright George Chapman—”
“Don’t,” Jem said.
“I wasn’t going to quote him,” she complained. “I was merely summarizing his argument.”
Jem shuddered. Who would have thought that his household would be invaded by a child whose prodigious memory had nothing better to do than memorize large swaths of drama? Obviously it was his fault for inviting actors to rehearse their plays at Fonthill. Parenthood was full of these traps, it seemed to him. An obvious decision—have the actors out to Fonthill so he needn’t travel to London for their performances—became fraught with complications once it intersected with Eugenia.
Meanwhile she hopped off his knee. “I shall devote myself to finding you a mate,” she said.
“What?”
“A mate!” She paused at the door and looked back at him, a beloved, enchanting, awkward little combination of himself and Sally. “Unless you would like to reconsider the question of my governess?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want a wife at all, Eugenia.”
But she was gone.
Chapter Five
In Which Masculinity is Described and Detailed
January 7, 1784 The Country Seat of the Duke of Beaumont Overheard at Tea
“T he key to being male,” the Duke of Villiers said, “is to think like a male. It’s really quite simple.”
“That’s exactly how I would have described it,” Isidore said, laughing. “Simple.”
Villiers cast her a look. “Ribaldry aside, if a person looks male, everyone assumes he is male. If a bystander appears doubtful, say you’re going to take a piss. Men never expect women to know that word. Or say something about your pole.”
“My what?” Harriet asked, and then felt herself turn pink. “Oh, of course. I can do that.”
“You’d better stuff your breeches in front,” Villiers said.
“Thereby aligning yourself with the larger part of English males,” Jemma put in.
“This is all so vulgar,” Harriet complained.
“Men are vulgar,” Villiers said. “If you are naturally rarefied and delicate in your thinking, then do not put on a pair of breeches.”
“I can be vulgar,” Harriet said instantly.
“If you can manage vulgarity, you’re half way to being male. Men are direct while discussing bedroom matters. We never say that a couple dances in the sheets, or any of those euphemisms women employ. Good old Anglo-Saxon words prevail.”
“Talk about yourself most of the time,” Jemma suggested. “For a man there is no nobler topic than himself.”