Then Villiers, across the table, leaned forward. “Want to go for a walk, Harry?” he said, rising.
She gratefully rose as well. And left without saying goodbye to Jem, though what good that would do from a gossip point of view, she didn’t know.
“I need to start walking, or so my valet tells me,” Villiers said with a little sigh.
“You look much better than you did a few weeks ago,” Harriet said. All the footmen were standing around the corridor. How much could they have heard of Pensickle’s fury? Would he say something to his valet?
“I mend,” Villiers said. Povy bundled the duke into an enormous greatcoat, and Harriet shrugged into her own.
They walked out into the night. There was just a thin fall of powdery snow in the air. It came onto their hats, not seeming to fall as much as to suddenly appear with its chill greeting on lips and noses.
The windows of Fonthill spilled dusky orange-red light onto the snow. They walked silently to the opening of the great gates, and then Villiers paused, leaning against one of the pillars. “Damn, but I’m a husk of a man,” he said, a trace of an apology in his voice.
“So am I,” Harriet said. “Have I ruined his reputation forever, Villiers?”
“It would take an idiot not to know you are bedding each other.”
“I don’t see why!” Harriet cried, frustrated. “He rarely whispers anything to me, or touches me.”
“It’s in your eyes when you look at each other,” Villiers said. “But they’re a strange crew at Fonthill. Most of the women are here for the free bed and board, and they’ll not let a little thing like choice of bedfellow stand in their way of free champagne.”
“That’s—do you really think so?”
“They are hardly acquaintances of Strange’s,” Villiers said. “Sometimes he doesn’t even know the women’s names. I have no idea why he opens his house to every light-skirt who makes her way here, but he does.”
“Never to actual night-walkers,” Harriet objected.
“I suppose he has some standards,” Villiers said wryly. “The majority of them are fending for themselves—either as actresses or as sole practitioners, if I might employ the term.”
“That makes them more interesting than many ladies,” Harriet said.
“Exactly. If we’re discussing men,” Villiers said, “then yes, some of them are friends. There’s the Game, of course, but I actually think men chiefly like this house for intelligent conversation, in combination with cheerfully loose women.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m not yet in a position to avail myself of female company,” he said, still leaning against the pillar.
Harriet threw back her head to look at the stars. Somewhere up there was the new planet, except it wasn’t truly new. It was just new to them. The stars looked cold and very far away.
“Should I leave?” she asked. And she held her breath, because she didn’t want to leave. She wanted—oh, so greedily—more days like these, full of vigorous exercise, vigorous argument, vigorous love-making.
“They’ll discover your true gender soon,” Villiers said. “And if they discover that you’re a duchess, Harriet, then the fat is truly in the fire. It would be disastrous—not for Strange. For you.”
“But it’s just a joke,” Harriet said feebly.
“I saw it that way. If it had been nothing more than a short masquerade, we could have carried it off. But I thought we were talking about a few days. Now it’s a matter of time. The way Strange looks at you…”
“Damn,” Harriet said, heartfelt.
“You haven’t told him who you really are, have you?”
Harriet shook her head.
“He won’t take it well. And, Harriet, the longer you conceal your rank, the more he will see your revelation as a betrayal.”