She supposed she would at least like to punish him a little. To introduce a little discomfort and uncertainty into his world as revenge for introducing a lot into hers. If someone like him thought her only bulwarks against the world—beauty and charm and talent—were paltry and common and tedious, how was she to survive? She might as well go into battle naked.
Though she suspected she looked very well naked, truthfully. She hadn’t heard one complaint.
“Aristotle described the virtues as courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, ambition, patience, and friendliness.” The duke enunciated this emotionlessly and tersely and managed to make them sound like the names of soldiers he was ordering before a firing squad.
The net effect was that everyone present silently and somewhat uneasily reviewed their souls for these virtues, and decided they might be missing a few.
Mariana wasn’t certain she knew what “magnanimity” or “liberality” meant, but she wasn’t about to ask him.
“Magnificence,” regrettably, fitted him the way his beautifully tailored suits did.
“Then is chastity a virtue by that definition, or a vice?” she pressed. “Isn’t it an excess of chastity not getting enough—”
Mrs. Hardy cleared her throat noisily.
“And I suppose one can be an expert in one virtue and a failure at another? For instance, excelling at magnificence and failing at friendliness? Or do they all necessarily come as a set, like chess pieces?”
She noted a flicker of irritation, and somehow this was absurdly satisfying as if she’d been trying for hours to strike a spark from a flint.
“And who gets to decide what the virtues are? Why should Aristotle get to decide?” Mr. Delacorte was skeptical. “Do we elect new virtues as one does an MP? And if not, why not? We ought to have a vote.”
“Oh, I do love to vote!” Dot enthused.
“Excellent point, Mr. Delacorte,” Mariana said stoutly. “Who decides?”
Delilah and Angelique exchanged glances. Rumblings of a rebellion were underway. Before they knew it, a guillotine would be erected for the epithet jar.
“For that matter, who decides what the vices are?” Mariana pressed. One admonishing jar in the room was tyranny enough.
“I should think you would want to ease your way into the notion of virtue, Miss Wylde, as one does with new topics of study,” the duke said. “Aristotle has identified more than seven, and Thomas Aquinas identifies even more of them.”
“St. Thomas Aquinas!” Mrs. Pariseau clasped her hands in bliss. “Your Grace, oh, I do so appreciate a learned man.”
Mrs. Pariseau liked to flirt, and that’s precisely what she was doing now, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t about to saddle herself with another husband, as the last one had left her reasonably financially comfortable.
“We haven’t yet played charades here in the sitting room,” said Mrs. Durand suddenly, thinking it might be time to change the topic. “Charades would be rather amusing to try one of these nights.”
“We pantomimed a pirate battle once, Valkirk.” Mr. Delacorte liked to catch new guests up on the history of the entertainments in the sitting room. “Bolt was once almost killed by pirates, and so we all pretended to be pirates, even Captain Hardy.”
“Was he, indeed?” the duke said idly. “It does seem like something you’d want to relive again and again.”
“He killed the pirate instead,” Delacorte reassured him.
“That seems the best route to take when a pirate is trying to kill you.”
Like a child with a new toy, Delacorte always looked delightedly about the room with a “did you hear that?” expression every time the duke said something dry.
“Have you killed any pirates?” Delacorte asked.
“Eleven only yesterday,” the duke replied, to Delacorte’s beaming approval.
“I would love to play charades,” Dot exclaimed. “Is that where we all pretend to be other things?”
“Only while we’re not working, Dot,” Angelique hastened to remind her, imagining Dot pretending to be a bunny, for instance, and hopping with a tea tray.
“And perhaps another evening!” said Delilah hurriedly, noticing a certain grim set to the duke’s expression. “A . . . month from now. We’ve so much preparation to do for the Night of the Nightingale. Perhaps we’ll celebrate with charades or a pantomime when it’s over!”
“Perhaps we ought to have a charade of all the vices,” Mariana suggested.
“I’m certain you’ll be able to more than creditably perform any vice, Miss Wylde,” the duke said charitably.
He returned to his newspaper and therefore missed her cold stare.
“I’m certain I could,” she muttered after a moment, which was about as clever a rejoinder as she could muster.
Frankly, she thought it might be fun.
“I call gluttony!” Mr. Delacorte said after a moment.
“We do have the most delightfully spirited discourse in this room,” Mrs. Pariseau said with a happy sigh. “All credit to Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy, who seem to know precisely who ought to stay here.”
“It’s a conundrum,” Mr. Delacorte mused two days later, aiming a stream of smoke upward in the smoking room one night, when Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were present and the duke was out at an engagement. “Miss Wylde in the sitting room feels like . . . when you open up a window on a spring day, and in comes a breeze and birds tra-la-la’ing their heads off. And the duke . . . I suppose he’s like the first frost, ain’t he? And the first frost ain’t a bad thing. It’s just a very different thing. So I don’t know what kind of weather we have in the sitting room at night.”
It was always warm in the room, though. Even though Miss Wylde unfailingly gave a little shiver, drew her shawl more tightly around her and said something to the effect of, “Goodness, a little chill just ran through me. It was like winter in my very soul,” when the duke passed her table to settle in.
And each night his jaw clamped just a little more tightly.
On the fourth evening after the duke’s arrival, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand thought music would be a welcome change of pace from philosophical discussions, idiosyncratic chess, spillikins, and subtle but palpable tension. On the theory that music soothes the savage breast, they thought they’d give that a go.
“Why don’t we have singing? Oh, Miss Wylde . . . we hesitate to call upon you, as we know you’ve sung for audiences at Drury Lane and the King’s Theater . . . but we did wonder if you’d favor us with a song,” Mrs. Hardy said.
“Oh, my goodness, Miss Wylde, we would all be so grateful!” Mrs. Pariseau breathed.
“But please do not feel obliged,” Mrs. Durand added hastily.
They were so very kind. They were offering her free room and board! She couldn’t and wouldn’t disoblige them, and she’d love to take center of attention over the man behind the newspaper.
She’d availed herself of the ballroom for about fifteen minutes again today, running through scales and exercises, enjoying the surprisingly fine acoustics of the place and the luxurious velvet curtains. It would be pure recreation to sing a light ditty or two.