If the duke married this girl, who was no doubt a sheltered virgin, she’d be treated just like the crystal on that imaginary table. As a precious, breakable thing who would never have to endure the challenge of a spot on her hem. Because for a duke, there was the woman you married.
And then the woman who would do nearly anything for him in the dark.
They could never be the same woman.
She’d known that, of course.
Hadn’t she?
“Oh, Your Grace! Good evening!” Mrs. Pariseau called. “I don’t suppose you’d like to help make paper roses?”
Mariana looked up with a start.
There he stood in the doorway, coat draped over an arm, hat in his hand. Looking every inch of what he was. Even now her body felt weak at the sight of him.
For the first time, however, she felt small and tawdry.
Her pride had taken a ringing blow. Surely that was all.
She didn’t think it was fatal.
But she needed to be alone.
She turned her head away and opened her fist, amazed that she’d squeezed the little paper rose she’d been working on. It was now ragged and limp.
“I just had a meeting with my Man of Affairs about a roof repair. Paper roses would be thrilling in comparison.”
She was certain he was puzzled by why she hadn’t turned. She knew his face brightened when he saw hers. She was petty enough to deny him that much.
“Your Grace, we were just reading about you on page six of the London Times.”
His face went stony. “Surely you’re joking.”
Dot, alarmed by his expression, silently shook her head. She held the newspaper out to him.
Mariana watched his face go thunderous.
Then carefully, studiedly, coldly blank.
He lifted his head slowly and met Mariana’s eyes.
“Welcome to page six, Your Grace,” Mariana said lightly. “Now we’ve something in common.”
“Well, that, and Italian,” Mrs. Pariseau said happily.
James lay motionless on his bed. He was fully clothed, and apart from the dying fire, which he could not be bothered to get up and poke, it was dark. It was two o’clock in the morning. He’d spent the entire evening alone, waiting in an absurd agony of suspense. Starting at every sound. Every nerve on alert with hope and dread. Watching that tiny space between the door and his floor for the flash of a satin slipper.
She never came.
He was seething.
And he was in pain.
Galworthy? Galworthy’s wife? His daughter? Who had done it, sent that lying little snippet of gossip to the newspaper? It was difficult to imagine Galworthy doing it, but perhaps he was desperate to marry off his daughter. Perhaps something was amiss with his finances and he needed the settlements badly, and had thus concocted a ploy to corner the oh so honorable Duke of Valkirk into a marriage.
It was almost funny that anyone, anyone thought that was possible.
A very bad mistake, indeed.
Perhaps one of Galworthy’s servants had submitted the gossip item for money. Perhaps the daughter herself had done it, hoping to hasten an attachment along, or because she craved attention, or thought the attention would bring a better match if the duke decided she was not for him.
The risk was that it exposed Galworthy’s daughter to the scrutiny of ton gossips, and the duke to embarrassment or accusations of faithlessness when he’d made no such promise and had no such intentions, certainly not now. He did not think a few lines of printed gossip could ever embarrass him. But they could and did appall him. A little gossip about him merely wedged the way open for more of it; and more of it would collect like barnacles on the hull of his legacy. He had fought for what he had now—the influence, the wealth, the reach, the inviolable reputation—and it belonged not only to him. It belonged to his son and to his descendants.
And he, like his son said, belonged to the whole country.
He would be damned if anyone would so cheaply and willfully tarnish who he was.
He could not be embarrassed into marrying a girl. But the gossip could potentially embarrass his son and his new young wife. And while his son ought to have thicker skin, James didn’t care. He would do anything to protect him, regardless.
He understood something now, with a resignation that made him weak and wondering. He frankly wanted to call out whoever had put that expression on Mariana’s face—that pale emptiness, as though she was bleeding from the inside—and meet them on a field of combat, and mow them down.
But he supposed he’d be calling out himself, too. He was as much the culprit.
In his frustration, the pendulum of his thoughts swung violently and furiously in the opposite direction: She’s just an opera singer. I am a duke. How dare she make me suffer? How dare she make me wait? I could have any woman in my bed, if I chose. I could marry any beautiful girl in England.
He knew the truth of it: if their roles were reversed, he would not have been able to stay away from her for two days.
And this meant she, incomprehensibly, was stronger than he was.
What little alliteration would they choose to use if somehow their affair was discovered? “Hero in harlot’s bed.” “Valkirk sinks his dirk in disgraced diva.” The Rowlandson illustrations would be merciless and lurid; he could imagine them for sale at Ackermann’s, with part of the populace laughing and pointing, and others crushingly disappointed and confused. There would be broadsides. Mocking pub songs. And that would be part of his legacy, too. In fact, he imagined that every part of his legacy, every assumption about who he was as a man, would be pored over and questioned, because of a woman who thought he was amusing. Whose face went soft and lit like a lamp every time she saw him. Who, when she opened her arms to him, made him feel as though he was coming home.
A girl who’d taken other lovers, kissed other men, made love with astonishing skill and sensual abandon, enjoyed champagne a little too much, hadn’t quite hated her visit to a gaming hell, and who was trying to claim greatness of her own. She thought it would be safer at the top.
They could not be discovered. For his sake, and for hers.
So perhaps this gossip item was a mercy. A splash of water one threw over rutting dogs to get them to stop.
Mainly the little gossip item exposed another reality they both must face, however: there would come a day when he would make another match. He saw this as an inevitability.
And there would come a day, very soon, when Mariana was gone.
He wasn’t certain how to fix this for her, or if he should. He supposed the two of them would have preferred not to face anything like reality until she’d left for Paris.
Because, as she’d said before, some people preferred their dreams to their waking life.
She’d been right about something else, too. That understanding could be found in contrasts.
As he lay there in that empty room, he had a much better understanding of loneliness, because with her he had, for perhaps the first time ever, been so blessedly, blissfully not alone.
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well. I hope you have not been worried about me. I think you’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve decided to join a convent. It’s the best place for someone like me, and I think I can put my singing skills to good use there.
At least this was a letter her mother might not be appalled to receive. After all, her mother had always thought she was destined for great things.