Duchess By Night

The company was assembled on rows of gilt chairs facing a raised platform stage, so Harriet and Isidore moved to stand behind the last row. One side of the ballroom was lined with tall narrow windows looking onto a formal garden. It was undoubtedly quite handsome in the summer, but at the moment it was a few degrees above arctic, due to a draft stealing under the windows.

On the stage a young woman glared furiously at the heavens. She flung out her arm and cried: “Bright star of Venus, fallen down on the earth, how may I reverently worship thee enough?”

“She must be freezing,” Isidore remarked, drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders.

The actress was wearing a gown made of twists of gauze, sewn all over with glittering bits of glass. Her hair was free and strung with glass beads.

“It’s a lovely costume,” Harriet whispered back. “Look how her hair glitters.”

“It shimmers with every shiver,” Isidore said.

Another woman appeared, wearing a crown and a scanty toga-like costume. “Here be Venus of the sky. Ask me your request, fair maiden.”

“I wanted to be at least a little bit shocked,” Isidore hissed. “This is like a bad masque at Court.”

Harriet felt a pluck on her sleeve and turned to find Kitty beaming at her. “Come join us,” she whispered. “I saved you a seat.”

Lord Strange appeared from nowhere and began speaking to Isidore. He didn’t even greet Harriet, and when she glanced at them, he didn’t raise his eyes.

Though obviously he knew she was standing there. Fine.

“Isidore,” she said, interrupting whatever Strange was saying. Isidore was laughing and there wasn’t a trace of worry on her face any more.

Strange was one of those men who made everyone in his vicinity fade away. He was standing there looking a bit tired, but burning with fierce intensity and she felt like—

How ridiculous.

“Don’t worry about the duchess,” Strange said, not bothering to greet Harriet properly. “She can join me in the front row. You trot off with the lovely Miss Kitty.”

Harriet ground her teeth. “If the ballet of the six virgins grows too risqué, Isidore will not be comfortable in the front row.”

Strange gave Isidore a wicked little half-smile. “I’ll leave it entirely up to her,” he murmured in such an intimate way that Harriet felt her face grow a little hot. Not surprisingly, Isidore kissed Harriet goodbye with indecent haste.

“You go with your friend,” she said brightly.

Kitty had returned to her seat and was beckoning in an extremely unsubtle manner.

“What a lucky young man you are,” Strange murmured. He took Isidore’s arm. “I fancy Mr. Cope will occupy himself this evening, Your Grace.”

Isidore smiled at him. “I don’t use the title. Please, you must call me Isidore.”

Harriet forced herself to walk away without looking back. Strange wasn’t for her. By all appearances, he was interested in Isidore, which was good for Isidore’s plan.

She felt a tinge of sympathy when she realized that her seat turned out to be next to Nell. Poor Nell, in love with Strange and soon to be disappointed, it seemed.

“Did you give him a letter from me?” Nell whispered eagerly.

On the stage, Venus seemed to be rather angry about something. “I fear the sparkling majesty that issues from your most imperial eyes,” the maiden said, falling to her knees.

“Yes, I did,” Harriet whispered back.

“What did he say? Is he coming to my bed tonight?”

Nell’s eyes were shining the way Kitty’s did when she looked at Harriet. Both Nell and Kitty had woefully misplaced affections. At the moment, for example, Kitty was almost leaning on Harriet’s shoulder, although she was pretending to be interested in the histrionic acting on the stage.

“I tried to be more subtle,” Harriet said. “I sent him the first two lines of a poem, and I’ll give him two more tomorrow.”

Nell looked unconvinced. “What did the poem say?”

“The dark is my delight,” Harriet said.

When Nell smiled, her whole face transformed from an almost plain collection of features to something truly enchanting. “Lovely!” she said. Then she leaned over and whispered in her ear. “I told Kitty that you were the heir to a coal mine, so be sure and act like it.”

Harriet goggled at her. “You what?”

“Not that you needed it,” Nell said, smothering a giggle. “She’s got a stupendous attraction to you.” She bent over and whispered in Harriet’s ear. “She says you’re a gentleman of voluptuous beauty. Voluptuous! What a word to use for a man.”

Harriet’s heart sank. She wasn’t voluptuous even in female clothing. At that very moment Kitty’s hand crept onto Harriet’s knee. Harriet nearly jumped out of her seat and whipped her head around, only to meet Kitty’s naughty little smile.

She picked up Kitty’s hand and moved it firmly off her knee; Kitty pouted but didn’t say anything, so Harriet looked straight ahead and pretended to be following the performance.

Venus was gone, replaced by two more shivering, wailing virgins…Who knew that Lord Strange’s disreputable house parties were so tedious?

Isidore and Lord Strange left after ten minutes, but Harriet didn’t think it had anything to do with the six mournful virgins. More likely, Isidore was bored.

She was bored.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” she whispered to Kitty, when the six virgins had been joined by six extremely scantily clad young men. Harriet fancied she could see their goose-bumps from her seat.

“I think there might be a more interesting part coming,” Kitty whispered back. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the stage since the male actors appeared.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Harriet said firmly.

She escaped just as one of the virgins collapsed into her male counterpart’s arms. Harriet could only be glad that at least they would be able to share a little warmth.

Chapter Sixteen

The Leaning Brothel of Fonthill

February 7, 1784

H e walked into her room the next morning with hardly a knock on the door, but Harriet was ready this time. She was up and dressed, casually seated in an armchair reading, as though she hadn’t flung herself there two seconds before.

“Oh!” Strange said, coming up short.

She rose, smiling, as if men strode into her bedchamber regularly. “Are you ready to go, sir?” she asked, ignoring the fact that her bottom throbbed like a pincushion at the very thought of a saddle.

“Yes,” he barked.

He looked angry again. Obviously, something about her made him peevish. Harriet thought about ill manners all the way down the staircase. Benjamin used to feel free to be very ill-mannered as well.

But she had been trained that a lady should never exert her moods over other people. And she had adhered to that plan for years, never snapping at the people who obliquely blamed her for Benjamin’s suicide, no matter how pestilently rude she felt they were being.

Strange leapt onto his horse with a sort of boyish enthusiasm that she found attractive, despite herself.

Or perhaps it was the way the muscles in his legs bulged when he settled on the horse.

That was one thing about attending a party notorious for its illicit liaisons: the atmosphere lent itself to frank assessments of bodily charms. There was a great deal about Lord Strange that Harriet found attractive.