Duchess By Night

Page 9

“But,” Harriet said confusedly, “there won’t really be a myself, if you see what I mean.”
Villiers eyed her. “Lived your life in the country. You’d better be my second nephew Cope. He’s an odd duck who is never seen in town. He has a doting mother: that explains the effeminacy.”
“I’m not—” Harriet began and realized the absurdity of what she was saying. “I suppose I will be a trifle effeminate.”
“You’ll have to figure out how to walk like a man. I can get you fitted up with clothes,” Villiers said, “but walking is important. Can you smoke?”
“Absolutely not. But I shall enjoy the clothing. I loathe wearing panniers. I’m always bumping into doorways, not to mention people.”
“What about your hair?” Isidore asked. “If you cut your hair now, you’ll never be able to wear it high again.”
Harriet smiled. “I don’t wear it high now.” She gestured toward her modest arrangement of curls and puffs. “Most of this was added by my maid this morning. My own hair barely reaches my shoulders.”
“Very clever,” Jemma said. “I keep meaning to try a hair piece.”
“I doubt you could do it successfully,” Harriet said. “Your hair is such a beautiful gold color. But mine is dull brown, and it’s easy to match.”
“Your hair is not dull!”
Harriet shrugged. “Who would know, what with the hot iron and crimping and powdering? I shall positively relish being male if it means I could stop trying to straighten my hair.”
“Men do not straighten nor curl their hair,” Villiers stated.
“Some do,” Isidore put in. “I am quite certain that Saint Albans curls his hair. And he wears lip color as well.”
“I shan’t,” Harriet said.
“I wouldn’t let you,” Villiers said. “If you’re going to do this, you’re going to do it right. And that means you’ll be my creation.”
Jemma laughed. “Created in Villiers’s image: you’re going to be a huge success, Harriet!”
Harriet bit her lip. The idea of being Villiers’s creation, after the time when she tried to seduce him and he rejected her, was mortifying.
She wasn’t the only one remembering that night. In the depths of his black eyes there was a mocking spark that said: you can’t do it. After all, when she kissed him in the carriage, he had done something so shocking that she actually slapped him. He knew her to be a conservative, tiresome country woman.
“There’s no need to go to these extremes,” he said now. “We could simply dress you as Isidore’s elderly aunt from the country. You’d make a fine chaperone and no one would question you.”
The anger in Harriet’s chest felt like fire. She had played the fool when she tried to seduce Villiers, and he had been right to scorn her. Benjamin had been his closest friend, and she had kissed him in a misguided impulse to make Benjamin notice his wife.
But she was no elderly aunt from the country.
“I shouldn’t think I’ll have the slightest problem playing a man,” she said. “I shall merely remember to rearrange my breeches in front at least once an hour, thereby drawing attention to the padding I carefully placed there in the morning, and I’ll blend in perfectly.” She let her eyes slide below his waist.
“A low blow,” Villiers said.
“Low indeed!” Isidore crowed.
“Lucky I brought my tailor with me,” Villiers said. “You need everything from boots to periwigs.”
“You can be measured for boots and I’ll send to London for them,” Jemma said.
“I must return to Berrow for quarter sessions before I can travel to Fonthill,” Harriet said with a frown.
Villiers raised an eyebrow.
“A sot rules the shire court in my village,” Harriet told him. “So we abide by the old customs. He sleeps off the brandy of the night before and I make the rulings. Otherwise he simply gives everyone hard labor, no matter the offense or the truth of it.”
“Who’s the current duke?”
“He’s eleven years old, and at Eton,” Harriet said.
“You must know of his mother, Lady Brewyn,” Jemma put in. “She is currently living in Paris with a man twenty years her junior. A cheerful woman, by all accounts.”
“I’m taking care of the estate for my nephew,” Harriet said, “and that includes the shire court, at least until he is of age or the current judge is replaced.”
“I shall wait for you to return from the quarter sessions,” Isidore said. “Meanwhile, I’ll send a letter to my husband declaring my visit to Strange. I’m sure it takes a while to return from Africa.”
“I am immensely amused by this scheme,” Villiers said.
“There’s nothing better than an occasional act of folly,” Jemma said. “You would be the better for it yourself, Villiers.”
“The fact that His Grace lies there recovering from a duel suggests that acts of folly are second nature,” Harriet said gently.
Then she smiled at the narrowed eyes of Villiers—and the amused eyes of Jemma.
She felt like a new Harriet.
Not a widow.
Not tedious.
A wild Harriet, a Harriet who engaged in folly, a Harriet who saw life as a challenge, not a failure.
Chapter Six
Justice By Duchess, Part Two
February 1, 1784 Shire Court The Duchy of Berrow Honorable Reginald Truder, presiding
“I f I understand you correctly, Mr. Burch, the defendant pretended to be a barber.”
“And then he stole my fish!” Mr. Burch said, keeping his eyes imploringly on the duchess. He’d heard as how she was the only one who saw to it that justice was done.
“Your fish,” the duchess said.
“What fish? What fish?” barked the judge. He had deeply flushed cheeks and a beak of a nose. He looked more like a convict with a headache rather than a judge.
“It was the fish that he pretended the haberdasher sent to my wife,” Mr. Burch said. He skewed his eyes toward the duchess again. Anyone could tell that she was the only one really listening; the judge was swilling out of a flask again. “It wasn’t just the fish,” Mr. Burch continued. “First he pretended to be a barber and gained entrance to my house. Then he stole a silver cup that my wife had sent over from the silversmith, by pretending that he’d come to deliver the fish.”
“So it wasn’t your fish?”
“Well, it was—I suppose it was his fish. He came back and took the fish anyway, telling my wife that—”
“Hard labor,” the judge stated, glaring around the court.
The duchess put a hand on his arm. She spoke quietly, but Tom Burch still heard her. “I’m just getting to the bottom of it, Reginald.”
“I don’t like fish,” he said.
She patted him again and said, “So we can discount the theft of the fish, Mr. Burch, because the defendant sent you the fish, and then took it back again. But that was a stratagem to allow him to gain access to your house and steal your silver cup.”
“He was caught with it!” Mr. Burch said triumphantly. “Caught red-handed! In the deed! With the cup!”