Her skin was warm and silky, her brown eyes opened wide. What had they been discussing? Ah, that blasted dress. Justin pried her fingers off the fabric, and let it tall to the floor. “For Magda to make a vulgar display of herself is one thing. You, however, are my wife.”
Elizabeth was confused. If he was still talking about that dratted dress, she had thought it vulgar herself. But if he was talking about the exhibition she currently was making, standing in the bedroom with said dress down around her ankles, it had not been
her
idea to disrobe. Not that she was any more uncovered than she had been previously, because she still wore her petticoat and stays and most especially her chemise. According to Maman, a chemise was the defining sign of a lady’s delicacy, a pledge of honor that sheltered her from unsanctioned eyes. Blast Maman, anyway. And blast St. Clair. “Why
did
you marry me?” Elizabeth demanded.
Justin surveyed his wife’s shapely body, and marveled that so slender a damsel should feel the need of stays. Maman’s influence, he guessed. Yes, and how was he to get her out of those stays without scaring her witless? A maiden with delicate sensibilities must be gently treated, lest she be given an eternal disgust of the marriage bed, which would be a pity, because he intended to spend a great deal of time in that bed with her, and not just for the purpose of setting up his nursery.
Why had he married her? The question was impertinent, irrelevant, and unanswerable. “I do not immediately perceive what that has to do with anything. It is not something with which you need to be concern.”
Elizabeth stepped away from him. “I suppose I also not need concern myself that you and Magda eloped to Gretna Green.”
Justin reminded himself to strangle his cousin. “I fail to see what that signifies. We were young and foolish. I would not marry for love again.” He realized from his bride’s expression that this had not been a wise choice of words. “People of our class wed for social advancement, security, wealth. You know that, Elizabeth.”
So she did. It was the way of their world. Elizabeth had married for social advancement—or Maman had—and St. Clair had married for wealth. Men of stature with dwindling fortunes frequently sought to revive their estates by marrying women of fortune, even women of lower social rank. Not that she had seen any indication that St. Clair’s fortunes were on the dwindle. And not that this was not the answer she had wished to hear. “Fustian!” she said.
A good biddable girl with a proper way of thinking, Justin reminded himself. He had been promised a comfortable little wife. In this particular moment his good, biddable wife was glaring at him as though she might turn him to stone. Perhaps this was an instance where action would prove more effective than words. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Elizabeth cried out, and beat at him with her fists.
It was to no avail. St. Clair was the stronger. He dumped his bride on the pillows and held her down while he went work on the corset strings. The corset was quickly discarded, along with her petticoat, leaving her in her chemise. Elizabeth did not wish to give up her chemise. He caught her hands before she could box his ears.
Justin paused to compose himself. He was not displaying a great deal of finesse. In point of fact, he was displaying none at all. Nor was he likely to, if Elizabeth didn’t cease writhing about on the bed.
Her cheeks were pink, her bosom heaved, her hair was coming unpinned. She looked deliciously abandoned, save for her expression, which was mutinous. “My dear,” said Justin. “I do not want us to live like cats and dogs.”
Not?
In that case, what was he doing with mistresses and ex-wives and cousins strewn all about the house? The duke wasn’t bored now, at any rate. His expression was not toplofty, nor his countenance stern. Informality suited him; tousled hair, unbuttoned shirt, bared chest. Her gaze lingered on the latter. Unfair that he should tempt her so.
Yet, why should he not tempt her? Were they not man and wife? Hard to remain coherent when held so close to him. “You are squashing me.
Do
you have a mistress?” Elizabeth asked.
Justin was so startled he released her. Elizabeth grabbed the counterpane and scrambled off the bed. He propped himself up on one elbow.
“What
did you ask me?”
Now that she had escaped the bed, Elizabeth wished she were back in it. St. Clair must be the most disturbing man in the entire world. With as much dignity as she could command, she wrapped herself in the counterpane. “I asked if you had a mistress. An inamorata. A
petite amie.
I daresay you know the meaning of the terms.”
Of course the duke knew the meaning of the terms. However, his duchess should not. He didn’t know how to properly respond to her question, because naturally he had a mistress, though he hadn’t thought of her in a prodigious long time. “I’m shocked that you would ask me such a thing.”
He hadn’t denied the accusation. Though it was not more than she had expected, Elizabeth’s heart sank down to her toes. “Lady Ysabella made a reference to Henry IV. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to tell me something or not.”
As Justin recalled matters, his wife wasn’t to bother him with nonsensical notions. Her mama had said so. Elizabeth was supposed to be the sunny-tempered epitome of good sense. Not that Justin was displaying much good sense himself at the moment, or a sunny temper. He leaned back on the pillows. “Ah, the fifty-six mistresses. You may make yourself easy on that head. Come here, Elizabeth. I promise you I have never debauched a nun.”
Nor was he going to debauch her. Elizabeth was no longer in the mood. She retreated to the fireplace, and picked up a poker. “I don’t think so.”
How had things come to this pass? Justin supposed he could hardly blame his bride for arming herself with a fireplace poker when he had threatened her with a gun. He could disarm her easily enough, but to what end? Was he to chase her around the room yelling “Stop! Stay! Lie down! Roll over!” as if she were a hound? “I cannot do this,” he said, and got up from the bed.
Elizabeth had been prepared to defend her virtue, or
pretend
to defend her virtue, which even she realized was a matter of cutting off her nose to be revenged of her face. She watched as her husband picked up his dueling pistol. That stern expression had returned.
He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the door key. Elizabeth took a firmer grip on the poker. “Are you going to lock me in?”
Where did the girl get her nonsensical notions? Justin inquired, “Why should I do that?” She flushed, and stared at the floor.
Elizabeth’s Maman had a great deal for which to answer. Perhaps Justin would throttle
her.
He tossed his wife the key. In catching it, she dropped the coverlet. Quickly, she snatched the fabric up, her cheeks aflame.
She was charmingly innocent. Justin preferred she remain so. Rather than allowing reprobates to flirt with her and ogle her bosom. No question but that Conor Melchers had ogled her bosom. Only a eunuch would have failed to ogle her bosom, and Melchers was anything but that.
It would be a cold day in the nether regions before Melchers gaped at her bosom again, had Justin anything to do with the matter. “Conor Melchers is a
roué
. A man of convenient morals. A libertine. I trust I have made myself clear. We will not speak of this again.”
Elizabeth understood that her husband had climbed back up on his high ropes, and also that he had got the cart before the horse. She thrust out her chin.
Did she deliberately set out to both madden and unman him? Justin swung on his heel and walked out of the room. With unnecessary force, he closed the door.
“Damnation!” muttered the duchess, as she sank down on the footstool. A certain want of domestic comfort, indeed.
Chapter 16
“A cut is only excusable when a gentleman persists in bowing whose acquaintance a lady does not wish to keep up.”
—Lady Ratchett
It was clear to every member of the staff from Chislett to the boot boy that all was not
le couleur de rose
between the Duke of Charnwood and his bride. Startling enough that St. Clair and his duchess had as yet failed to share the bridal bed; now it seemed they could scarce bear to be in the same room. Therefore, when Madame de Chavannes suggested a country outing, no one was especially surprised St. Clair excused himself on the pretext of having urgent business elsewhere.
“Spoilsport!” murmured Magda.
“Alors,
we will leave Saint to his sulks. And we shall contrive to be merry without him,
enfin."
Lady Augusta also begged off, saying that she had an entertainment to plan out, and would do it much better if she weren’t obliged to rub shoulders with
canaille.
Therefore, it was Elizabeth and a couple of stalwart footmen who accompanied Magda on her outing, which wasn’t precisely into the country, as she had suggested, but to a country fair. “I only stretched the truth a little bit,
”
she protested, in response to Elizabeth’s accusing glance.
The day was cloudy and overcast, the weather cool. The ladies were clad appropriately for their adventure, the duchess in a white muslin gown with a lace collar, pale purple pelisse with gold cord and gray fur trim, a matching bonnet with pink ribbons and roses, and half boots. Madame de Chavannes was less flamboyant than usual in a gown of chintz with long sleeves and a narrow flounce, a red shawl with a Greek pattern, a hat modeled on a Greek helmet, and high red morocco shoes.
For someone who had fled the guillotine with the clothes on her back, Madame was surprisingly well-dressed. “Gus says you are a foreign agent,” Elizabeth remarked.
“
Vraiment?”
Magda smiled. “Gus would see me burned for high treason to amuse herself.”
Granted, Lady Augusta was of a perverse nature. Still, Elizabeth was not convinced. She studied the people pressed around them, traders offering fabrics and trimmings and countless other products, merrymakers and pickpockets and thieves. The air smelled of animals and food cooking and unwashed flesh. “You can’t deny that you have friends among the émigrés. There might even be French spies among this crowd.”
Magda was counting on it. “If there are Frenchmen among us, what of it? You grow as suspicious as Gus. The émigrés gather together to lament their exile and curse the Republicans in Paris and do little else. At any rate, I am not French.”
Nor fish, fowl, nor good red herring. Elizabeth wondered exactly what Magda was, and her reasons for coming to the fair. Maman had not approved of fairs, which she condemned as gatherings of loose, idle, disorderly people where morals could be corrupted in a trice.
Corrupt or no, the crowd was merry. Hucksters and musicians strolled about the grounds. Elizabeth saw acrobats and rope dancers, equestrian performers, freak shows, and gambling tents. Had Gus known of the gambling tents, she would have overcome her fastidiousness quickly enough. Drum and fifes, pictorial handbills and banners advertised a puppet show. Elizabeth was staring entranced at a tightrope walker when beside her Magda said,
“Mon Dieu!
I am astonished. Conor is here also,
petite,”
That Magda was the least bit astonished, Elizabeth took leave to doubt. She frowned. Magda twinkled. “Bonaparte is busy in Cairo executing rebels and dining in restaurants opened by the city’s French citizens for the soldiers in their midst.”
What had Bonaparte to do with anything? Elizabeth greeted the newcomer skeptically. With the air of a conjurer performing a magic trick, he presented the ladies with apples obtained from a fruit stall. Magda laughed and bit into the fruit. Juice trickled down her chin. She wiped it away with a careless glove.
The crowd was thick about them, the air dense with noise. They paused to watch a dancing horse, a conjurer, and a puppet show, which incorporated some senseless dialogue between Punchinello and the Devil, and inspired Magda to inexplicably remark that Napoleon had poisoned the dogs in Cairo because the beasts sounded a warning whenever French soldiers approached.
A blare of trumpets sounded. Costumed actors marched back and forth on the balcony of the strolling players’ booth, where a placard announced a performance of the farce,
The Whore of Babylon, the Devil, and the Pope.
Magda led the way inside the structure, which was built of stout wooden boards, and boasted two galleries in addition to the boxes and pit.
The farce was amusing, and dealt irreverently with witches, necromancy, and regicide, the Papist church being the whore of Babylon, and the pope the Antichrist. Elizabeth forgot her troubles for upward of a half hour.
The performance ended. Elizabeth and Mr. Melchers emerged from the players’ booth to find darkening skies. Magda and the footmen were nowhere in sight. They had gone but a short distance when thunder crackled and rain began to fall. Sighed the duchess, “It needed only that.”
“This way,” said Mr. Melchers, and took her arm. The crowd pressed close around them, some amused by the sudden soaking, and others less so. Animals milled, people shouted. A bedraggled harlequin tripped and fell flat in the mud. With a firm grip on her arm, Conor drew Elizabeth with him, using his body to shelter her from the worst shoving of the crowd.
What was Magda playing at, leaving them alone like this? Though she had escaped Madame Guillotine, Conor might have her head himself. He had no doubt as to how St. Clair would react to this têtê-à-têtê. And a têtê-à-têtê it would be, were that cart where he remembered. Not for any number of angry husbands would Conor get soaked to the bone.
Memory did not fail him. Before them loomed a wooden caravan wagon with a high arching roof and door at the back. The apparatus would be drawn by a horse or mule, the driver perched in front on an outdoor seat. Neither horse, mule, nor driver were in evidence at the moment. Conor scooped up a bedraggled black kitten that huddled beneath the cart and pushed open the door. Elizabeth followed him inside.
She looked around with interest. The caravan was partitioned at the further end to accommodate a sleeping place constructed like a berth aboard a ship. The other half served as a kitchen, fitted up with a stove, a closet, and several chests. Cooking utensils and crockery hung on the wall. Strewn all about were hardware, tools, and strange metal items, she assumed to mend and sell. “We’re trespassing. Someone lives here.”