“You are abominable,” said Zoe, and she flounced away.
Zoe expressed her disgust with him in the time-honored fashion of women everywhere, by shopping exhaustively.
The sums she spent would have daunted most men, certainly, for she was determined to have everything of the best and most fashionable, from head to toe. Among other things, she bought dozens of corsets. Unlike other modistes, Madame employed her own corset maker, in order to assure a perfect fit for her gowns.
As she’d made clear earlier, Zoe had strong opinions on this topic.
Before she went into the fitting room, she not only explained to Madame precisely how her breasts ought to be most comfortably and attractively arranged but demonstrated, by holding them in the desired position.
“Not in front of the shop window, Miss Lexham, I beg,” the duke said. And not in front of me.
“I forgot,” she said. “I must not take hold of my breasts before others who are not my husband.” She turned to Madame. “I lived in another place, and the rules there are different for what is said and done and what is not.”
“Oui, mademoiselle,” said Madame. “Let us go into the fitting room, if you please.” She kept her face neutral. From elsewhere in the shop, Marchmont heard giggles.
“I don’t want the short kind,” Zoe said as Madame led her to the curtained alcove. “They press the ribs under my breasts, and they do not enhance the shape in the way I wish. I want the kind that comes to here.” She indicated the place on her hips. “And it must have the shape that makes the pretty curve from the waist and makes the bottom—But no. Augusta said I should not mention my bottom. It is vulgar, she said. Jarvis, what is the word they use? For the same thing?”
“That’s derrière, miss,” said a scarlet-faced Jarvis.
“A French word, yes. Now I recall. My French is execrable. What little I learned as a girl, I forgot. Thank you, Jarvis. What I wish, Madame Vérelet, is for the corset to shape exactly to my derrière. When I wear a dress of fine muslin or silk, I want the shape behind to make a curve, very round.” She curved her hands over her buttocks to demonstrate.
“Miss!” said Jarvis.
“Oh, yes.” Zoe released her derrière. “I forgot.”
She disappeared into the fitting room. Madame closed the curtain, but it was only a curtain. Marchmont could hear Zoe talking about her breasts and hips and derrière. He heard the rustle as Madame took out her tape and measured. He heard her murmur the measurements to the assistant, who wrote them down.
His mind instantly produced supporting illustrations.
He remembered the softness and warmth of her body melting against his.
His body reacted as one would expect, his temperature climbing upward, along with his cock.
And that was a bloody damned waste of energy, when the gods only knew when he’d have time for amours, at the rate things were going. He told himself it was only for a fortnight—if he didn’t kill her before that.
He looked round the shop at the hordes of females.
“Someone get me a drink,” he said.
When he returned her to Lexham House, Marchmont promised to call the following day.
“I don’t care,” said Zoe, nose in the air.
They stood in the vestibule while a parade of footmen unloaded parcels from his curricle. Most of Zoe’s frocks would not be ready for several days. However, when the Duke of Marchmont entered Madame Vérelet’s shop, all of her other customers dropped in priority to forty-second place. She had ordered her seamstresses to alter a few garments intended for other ladies who were not the Duke of Marchmont’s protégée.
Zoe was wearing one of these dresses. The duke had ordered her damaged gown burned.
He and she had spent an hour in a shoe shop as well, where she made sure he saw her prettily turned ankles, the evil little tease.
They had bought stockings, too, heaps of them.
He banished from his mind the provocative glimpses he’d had of her legs. Like it or not, he needed to think. With Zoe, a man needed his wits about him.
“It hardly matters whether you care or not,” he said. “I shall come to collect you at two o’clock. If you choose to spend the day in this house instead, you’re welcome to do so. I certainly have sufficient to occupy me. I shall not die of grief because I cannot escort a sulky young woman about London.”
“If you find me so disagreeable, I wonder why you came back into the dressmaker’s shop,” she said.
“What sort of paltry fellow do you take me for, to be put off by a temper fit?” said he. “Especially one of yours. It was hardly the first I’ve seen, and I am certain it won’t be the last. You ever were a pain in the a—Ah, Lord Lexham, I see you have escaped Westminster’s clutches.”
“Temporarily.” Zoe’s father, who’d quietly entered the vestibule between servants, stood watching the parade of parcels. “Zoe’s been shopping, I see,” he said.
“Oh, this hardly signifies,” said Marchmont. “These are merely some fripperies and trinkets we bought in the futile attempt to sweeten her ghastly temper.”
Zoe stormed out of the vestibule, hips swaying, skirts swishing.
“Never mind, sir,” Marchmont said, pitching his voice so that she’d hear him. “I promised I would see this thing through, and I shall, no matter what.”
Seven
Zoe might have become calmer and more rational if her sister Augusta hadn’t condescended to join the family after dinner that evening.
She had nowhere else to go, she said. She still did not dare show her face to her acquaintance. She wondered if she ever would dare, or whether she ought to remove to the country permanently.
“After Zoe’s carryings-on this day, I do not see how even the Duke of Marchmont can restore the family honor,” she said.
As Marchmont had predicted, news of their contretemps, in Grafton Street and in the dressmaker’s shop, was already making the rounds of the Beau Monde. Augusta enlightened their parents.
“Oh, Zoe,” Mama said. “How could you?”
Even when Zoe gave her version of events, her father, to her dismay, did not take her side.
“Marchmont was right to shout at you,” said Papa. “In his place I should have done the same. That was damned reckless of you, to pull a child from an overturned carriage. You should have left it to Marchmont. He’s perfectly capable of dealing with such matters.”
“You made him look ridiculous,” said Augusta.
“I?” Zoe said. “I have not noticed you or any of my other sisters showing him any respect. All of you criticize him and say he is useless and lazy—”
“We don’t say it in public. But you act like a ten-year-old child—and an ill-bred ten-year-old at that. Throwing a vase at him. Does that not strike you as childish?”
“It was a book!”
“Oh, Zoe,” said Mama.
“You are very lucky he came back, after the vulgar display you treated him to,” said Augusta. “But he at least thinks of Papa and his obligation to him. You think of nobody but yourself.”
“Obligation?” Zoe said.
“He’s under no obligation to me, I’m sure,” said Papa.
“You know he has always regarded you as a father,” Augusta said.
Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?
The words hung in Zoe’s mind. She remembered Jarvis’s interpretation of his words: Everybody knows he don’t care about much, but what he said to you means he cares about your father.
Now the memories flooded in, of the summers when Lucien and Gerard joined the Lexhams in the country. The two families had often spent weeks together, but she didn’t remember the early times, when the boys’ parents were alive. She didn’t remember what the duke and duchess looked like or sounded like. She remembered vividly, though, the dreadful time after Gerard was killed, when Lucien shrank into himself and avoided everybody. Papa took
him away, only the two of them, for what had seemed to her a very long time: months and months. When they returned, Lucien was himself again, or nearly.
Marchmont had returned to the dressmaker’s shop because of Papa. Zoe looked at her father.
“Obligation has nothing to do with it,” Papa said. “Everyone knows that Marchmont would never run away from a fight. Everyone knows that he regards his word as sacred.”
I promised I would see this thing through, and I shall, no matter what, he’d said.
“It’s all pride, and nothing to do with me,” Papa said. “Really, Augusta, you have a knack for twisting things about.”
She did have that knack. Augusta was a killjoy of the first order.
Pride or obligation, it hardly mattered, Zoe told herself. For her, Marchmont was simply a means to an end. She needed to remember this. She needed to remember this was all he was to her.
Perhaps Papa’s reproof subdued Augusta temporarily. Or perhaps she couldn’t at the moment devise another way to abuse her sister. Whatever the reason, she reverted to the subject of Almack’s.
Mama and Papa, who did not find this subject nearly as stimulating as Augusta did, moved away, Mama to her needlework and Papa to the chair beside her and a book.
Would she one day find a man with whom she’d sit in that way? Zoe wondered. Would she and this unknown husband ever be quietly content in each other’s company? While such a prospect might not be fashionable, Zoe decided it might not be as boring as some might think.
“Marchmont will be there,” Augusta said, drawing Zoe from a domestic reverie in which a man who too closely resembled the duke sat by the fire with her.
“Where?” Zoe said.
“Almack’s, of course,” said Augusta. “Were you not listening? The patronesses will be devastated if he doesn’t appear. He’s as important to them as Brummell used to be.”
“I think they’ll be devastated tonight,” Zoe said. “He said he had an engagement at eight o’clock.”
“That leaves plenty of time for Almack’s,” said Augusta. “The doors don’t close until eleven. His engagement is no doubt with Lady Tarling,” she added, lowering her voice so that their parents couldn’t hear—not that they offered any signs of listening to what was said on the other side of the room.
“Lady Tarling?” Zoe quickly ran through the names she’d memorized from the newspapers and scandal sheets. This one was unfamiliar.
“His mistress,” Augusta whispered.
Zoe felt a sharp stab within, which she told herself was foolish. He was a handsome, rich, and powerful man. All the virgins would want him for a husband. All the not-virgins would want him for a lover. “He must have many concubines,” she said.
“I am sure I know nothing of such things,” Augusta said. “However, he and her ladyship are exceedingly discreet, which is all propriety requires. She is a widow, after all, and widows and married women are allowed more freedom, as I am sure I have explained to you.”
“All widows have freedom but me,” said Zoe.
“Nobody knows what you are,” Augusta said. “How can you be a widow when by rights you could not have been properly married because the man already had a wife?”
Zoe doubted she’d been properly married in any sense, even by the standards of the world she’d escaped. She was a widow who couldn’t really be a widow because she hadn’t really been a wife because she remained a virgin. There was a social conundrum if ever she’d seen one.
“I can promise you that Lady Tarling will not accompany Marchmont to Almack’s,” Augusta went on. “Lady Jersey hates her and refuses to put her on the list. Lady Tarling pretends it doesn’t signify. She makes a point of going to bed before midnight on Wednesday, in order to rise at dawn to ride in Hyde Park. She’s a fearsome horsewoman. Everyone says that’s what attracted Marchmont to her in the first place.”
Zoe doubted it was the lady’s horsemanship that attracted Marchmont, but she filed away the information. She pondered it later that night when she woke from a bad dream about the harem.
The next morning, she, too, was up at dawn.
Marchmont House
Early Thursday morning
Jarvis stood in the anteroom, clutching her umbrella.
Under Dove the butler’s disapproving glare, she spoke rapidly to a barely awake Duke of Marchmont.
“I am so sorry to trouble you at this hour, Your Grace, but Lord Lexham has already gone out and Lady Lexham is in bed with a headache and not to be disturbed and none of Miss Lexham’s sisters or brothers has called yet this morning and I did not know what to do.” She took a deep breath and hurried on, “Your Grace, so far as I know, Miss Lexham has not been on a horse in twelve years, and she doesn’t know London. She took a groom with her, but I fear he doesn’t realize how long it’s been since she rode or how little she knows of London and I’m sure he doesn’t understand my mistress at all and it is very easy for her to—er—confuse the servants, especially the men.”
In other words, Marchmont thought, Zoe had gone out against her father’s orders and lied to the stablemen to get her way…exactly as she used to do.
He was not amused.
He had not slept well.
On Tuesday night the Duke of York had assured him that the Prince Regent would invite Zoe to the Birthday Drawing Room.
On Tuesday night, Marchmont had felt confident the matter was settled. He was not so confident at present.
Last night at Almack’s, the Duke of Marchmont was once more the topic of conversation. A highly exaggerated and distorted version of events in the Green Park, on Grafton Street, and in the dressmaker’s shop circulated through Almack’s ballroom.
He’d made light of it, as he always did. When Adderwood asked whether it was true that Miss Lexham had thrown a footstool at him, the duke replied, “I heard it was a book of fashion designs. In any event, it would hardly be the first time a lady has hurled a missile at my head and is unlikely to be the last. Harriette Wilson once threw a snuffbox at me, as I recall.”
He knew that wouldn’t be the end of the matter. White’s betting book would be full of Zoe today.
This didn’t worry him. Nothing the ton was talking about was scandalous, merely entertaining. The abortive embrace was nowhere mentioned.
What worried him was the Queen. She was a stickler of the first order, and if she owned a sense of humor, she hid it well. She was polite and gracious and suffocatingly correct. He was not sure what she’d make of the stories. He supposed it was too much to hope they wouldn’t reach her.
For all he knew, the invitation had not yet been sent. Even if it had been, it could be rescinded. If it wasn’t rescinded, Zoe could still be snubbed. At a Drawing Room, this would be catastrophic.
Such thoughts were not conducive to tranquility.
Now, roused from a not-so-sound sleep and hastily dressed by a fretful Hoare, His Grace was not in the best of humors. His narrowed gaze moved from the maid to his butler.
“I do apologize for troubling Your Grace,” said Dove. “I explained to this person that she ought to have brought her problem to Lord Lexham’s butler. We at Marchmont House have no control over the doings of Lord Lexham’s stablemen. Despite my earnest entreaties, she was most insistent upon speaking to you.”
She must have threatened Dove with the umbrella, Marchmont thought.
“Mr. Harrison is out buying provisions, Your Grace, else I should have consulted him,” Dove added.
“What the devil has Harrison to do with it?” Marchmont said. “Do you need him to tell you the matter is urgent? Was the maid’s anxiety for her mistress not plain enough? Send to the stables. I want a horse. Now.”
The Hyde Park Zoe discovered in the early morning was amazingly quiet and stunningly beautiful. A faint mist hung over the place, making the leaves of the trees shimmer. There was green, green, green as far as the eye could see, and the sheen of water in what her groom had told her was the Serpentine, a man-made river creat
ed in the time of King George II on the orders of his consort, Queen Caroline.
The view Zoe took in was easily worth the guilty conscience. She’d lied to the grooms. Wearing her mother’s habit, she sat upon her mother’s saddle on her mother’s horse. None of these articles, including the horse, fit her. She could only hope that she didn’t end up as a tangled heap of broken bones.
Ahead of her at present stretched the King’s Private Road. This was the road known as Rotten Row, the groom explained. It was strictly for riding, he said. Only the reigning sovereign was permitted to drive along this particular road.
At this hour, Zoe knew she’d little chance of encountering any sovereigns driving to or from Kensington Palace. At the moment, she didn’t even see another rider.
But as she was taking in the acres and acres of glistening greenery, a slim, elegant rider on a superb gelding approached. The horse’s dark coat matched the lady’s hair. Her wine-colored habit was of the highest quality and latest fashion. Her groom’s livery was splendid.
This had to be Marchmont’s concubine.
Zoe felt the twinge again, but sharper, augmented by envy. The lady was breathtakingly elegant and utterly sure of herself. She didn’t need lessons in how to stand or sit or pour tea.
As she neared, Zoe touched her crop to her hat. She couldn’t remember whether it was proper to acknowledge a rider to whom one hadn’t been introduced. On the other hand, failing to do it might be construed as a snub.
Zoe didn’t want to snub this woman.
She wanted to kill her.
It was wrong and stupid to feel this way, of course, but she couldn’t help it. She was uncivilized.
To her surprise, the lady returned the salute. She didn’t pause to speak, though, but rode on.
Zoe let her pass, then followed, slowly at first. But as Lady Tarling’s horse picked up speed, Zoe encouraged hers to do the same. Before long, Zoe was riding alongside the lady on the broad path. Lady Tarling glanced her way, smiled, and raised her eyebrows in inquiry. Zoe returned the smile and nodded. And so the race began.