“In a way,” Viola said, hunching her shoulders. “But in most ways, you’re not. My point is that you don’t ever throw up on meeting a stranger, do you?”
“No. But I’m worried about meeting the duchess,” she reminded Viola. “Life is full of discomforting events.”
Viola gave her a bleak look. “I know.”
They’d reached the breakfast room, where Prism guarded the door, the better to guide guests to precisely the right table.
“Good morning, Miss Astley, Lady Boadicea,” he said. “Miss Astley, may I say how pleased I am that you will breakfast with our guests this morning?”
“There’s nothing to be pleased about,” Viola said morosely. Then she added: “I lurked in the ladies’ retiring room at the ball last night, Prism, and I heard nothing but praise for the household.”
Prism’s smile widened to cover his entire face.
“You are the true lady of the two of us,” Betsy told her sister as a footman pushed the door to the breakfast room. “Perhaps you should marry Lord Greywick.”
Viola looked at her in horror. “Don’t make jests like that.”
The breakfast room was one of Betsy’s favorite chambers in all of Lindow Castle. Her grandfather had seen the room in a decaying palazzo in Venice and had the whole thing shipped home to England. The wood paneling was painted delphinium blue with elaborate swirls picked out in white.
The matching cabinets were filled with exquisite spun-glass vases. They were never used, as the late duke had bought the contents along with the cabinets and considered them akin to wallpaper. “Can’t replace ’em, might as well leave ’em be,” or so legend had it.
This morning Prism had rearranged the breakfast room due to the press of guests visiting the castle. Rather than a single board, small tables were dotted around the room, set with white cloths embroidered with forget-me-nots.
Viola’s hand tightened around Betsy’s arm like an outgrown bracelet.
“Mind your skirts,” Prism said, with the familiarity of a butler who had watched both of them grow from toddlers to ladies. “The tables are set close together.”
Betsy pasted a blithe smile on her face as she walked across the room. Some fifty persons of worth and consequence looked up and nodded their greetings. Thankfully, there was no sign of a pink-clad duchess. Beside her, she heard an almost soundless moan.
Prism came to a halt. Betsy heard a rustle spread through the room, as the guests realized that the Wilde sisters had been placed at a table holding a future duke and a future marquess, not to mention Adrian Parswallow.
Prism pulled out a chair. “Lady Betsy.”
“Viola, you first,” Betsy said, keeping her voice carefree as she pushed her trembling sister into a seat. That was a breach of etiquette, since she was the elder sister, but she had the distinct impression that Viola was thinking about dashing from the room.
“I’ll sit beside my sister,” Betsy said to Prism, before he could try to place a gentleman between them.
Only once she was seated did Betsy realize that Prism had attempted to put her in a chair beside Thaddeus, but instead Viola now sat there. Which meant Betsy had Jeremy on her left. Both men were on their feet, naturally.
Betsy shot a quick look at Jeremy under her lashes. He looked frightful, with smudges under both eyes. So much for the idea that their kiss would send him to sleep. Then she remembered the other rude things he’d said.
Perhaps he was up all night tupping Lady Tallow.
She shot him a frown.
He swayed a little. “Sorry, I haven’t had any sleep,” he murmured, sitting down as a footman placed buttered eggs on Betsy’s plate. “Did you just frown at me? In public? You never do that. In public you generally resemble a china doll with a painted smile.”
“That is frightfully rude,” Betsy said, although she had to admit that he had a point. Her smile was a powerful weapon and she didn’t hesitate to employ it.
She turned to the table at large and beamed. “How are you all today? Mr. Parswallow, I hope to hear the rest of your poem before you leave.”
“I can stay in the castle a day or two longer,” the gentleman said eagerly. “Last night I wrote an ode to p’heacocks.” He struck a pose, not easy while seated. “An obscene grandeur and a decadent feather with green-groping eyes . . .”
He paused. There was a deafening silence.
“An evocative line,” Betsy said hastily, picking up her sister’s cold hand and giving it a squeeze. No one knew how much courage it took for Viola to do something as simple as attend breakfast.
“What are the family peacocks’ names, Miss Astley?” Thaddeus asked Viola.
Betsy took a bite of egg and gave him an approving nod. Most people didn’t notice that Viola’s shyness was crippling, and if they did, they didn’t guess that she could be distracted by talk of animals.
“Fitzy and Floyd,” Viola replied, brightening slightly.
“P’heacocks are glorious pl’humed beasts,” Parswallow put in. “They belong on castle grounds.”
“They seem to be fantastically quarrelsome,” Jeremy remarked, waving his fork. “I witnessed a battle royal during which bucketfuls of dirt were scratched from the ground and flung about. The air was blue with cursing.”
“Peacocks are territorial,” Thaddeus said in his placid way. “Has His Grace ever considered acquiring a peahen or two, Miss Astley?”
“We’re afraid it would give them more reason to fight,” Viola answered.
From the table behind them, Betsy heard a penetrating whisper. “Miss Astley isn’t often seen in public.”
Hopefully Viola hadn’t heard that; Thaddeus was inquiring about the battles between aging Fitzy and the young upstart, Floyd.
The woman behind them seemed to believe she was inaudible, even though she was seated so close to Betsy that their skirts were almost overlapping. “No, no! She’s not a real Wilde. Her mother is the third duchess, but she’s a child of Her Grace’s first marriage. She’s quite peculiar, from what I hear.”
The reply to this extraordinarily rude comment came in a murmur, while Betsy chomped on her eggs, anger churning in her stomach. How dare anyone label Viola as “peculiar,” simply because she was shy?
“Yes, chatting to Greywick,” the first woman said clearly. “Of course, she can’t have him. Everyone knows he was on his knees last night.”
“Eavesdropping, Bess?” a husky voice said.
She scowled at Jeremy.
He glanced behind her. “Ah, the less-than-beloved Lady Tallow,” he murmured. “I warned you about her last night, did I not?”
“You said nothing about her loud voice.”
“Some people are like peacocks,” he said. “They offer their opinions and their bosoms at inopportune times.”
Betsy bit back a smile.
Lady Tallow continued, remorseless, “Of course, she’ll have an excellent dowry, but one has to wonder what the going rate is for such a cow-hearted girl.”
Just as Betsy was about to swing around and say something—anything!—Lady Tallow apparently noticed that one of her neighbors was engaged in a different conversation. “Poppycock!” she said loudly. “That Norwegian prince is a dapper fellow.”
“There is no—” Betsy began, and stopped. She never aired negative opinions in public. Young ladies weren’t allowed anything as controversial as an opinion.
“No what?” Jeremy said. “Eat your eggs. You’re too thin.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “This level of consideration isn’t characteristic. You must want something.”
Jeremy felt a germ of thoroughly uncharacteristic laughter stealing up his chest. “Now what could that be?” he asked, pitching his tone to mock innocence.
Betsy blinked and then caught on. A look of horror crossed her face. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“That’s why it was so funny,” he agreed.
The funny thing was that he actually did feel desire, even if it wa
s for an annoying girl who thought he was an irredeemable ass.
Common sense told him that there was nothing special about his feelings. A good quarter of the castle was in love—or lust—with the duke’s eldest daughter. She hadn’t powdered her hair this morning, and her skin looked particularly creamy against her dark locks.
Locks?
He truly was losing his mind, finally.
Locks. He felt his mouth twist into a sneer.
“That expression looks more like you,” Betsy said cordially. “Thank goodness. I was growing worried that you might have transformed into the sort of man who offers compliments and poetry over the breakfast table, when the only thing one wants is some buttered toast and silence.”
“Not poetry?” Jeremy asked. “Dear me, Mr. Parswallow, it seems you broke one of Lady Betsy’s cardinal rules.”
The poet bridled, but Betsy flashed her smile and he melted into an embarrassing puddle of adoration.
“I discovered my calling at Eton,” Parswallow announced, “and as a p’hoet, I can assure you that p’hoetry belongs at every meal.”
When no one showed much enthusiasm for this idea, he lapsed into sulky silence.
“I don’t remember being taught to write poetry at Eton,” Jeremy said. “You?” he asked Thaddeus.
“I was more engaged by the sciences,” Thaddeus replied.
“He was brilliant,” Jeremy informed the table at large. “I’ve never forgotten when Master Swinkler got irritated and said that if Thaddeus wanted to teach at Eton, he had to wait until he graduated from Cambridge.”
“Did you go to Cambridge?” Betsy asked Thaddeus.
“Of course he did,” Jeremy answered. “Bucked tradition, too, because generally dukes’ progeny are off to Oxford, in witness whereof: your brothers. But the brilliant lads all went to Cambridge.”
“Lord Jeremy and I were there together,” Thaddeus said. “Almost lived together one year.”
“I got in trouble and was sent down,” Jeremy said, unrepentantly. “Putting my disreputable career at Cambridge to the side, let’s return to Eton. Thaddeus had got hold of a book by a fellow named Kant, arguing that stars aren’t stars, but that each twinkle is a collection of them. He used to drive Swinkler mad by quoting from it.”
Thaddeus intervened. “Master Swinkler was teaching us theology, and he had an unreasonable attachment to the idea that God created our planet and put us at the center of it, the stars existing as a mere embellishment for the pleasure of our nightly strolls.”
“That is not the case?” Betsy asked, curiously. No one had ever indicated otherwise to her. She nudged her sister. “Did you know that, Viola?”
Viola was staring down at her plate, and just shook her head.
“Astronomers—Mr. Kant among them—surmise that what we see is a galaxy, or rather universes of them, at such a far distance from us that they can scarcely be seen,” Jeremy said.
Betsy looked at him, astonished. “Each star is one of these galaxies? Universes?”
“Single stars are close to us and those that seem far away are actually groups,” Thaddeus put in. “It’s an interesting idea, and astronomers since Kant first posed the theory have confirmed it, as far as they were able.”
Jeremy gave a bark of laughter. “Thaddeus was a galaxy above the rest of us.”
Then he watched as Betsy buttered toast and gave a piece to her little mouse of a stepsister, who looked as if she’d like to slide under the table. Jeremy narrowed his eyes. The poor girl was convulsively swallowing, a sensation he’d come to know all too well.
A cluster of smells could drive him to lose a meal—the obvious ones like blood and gunpowder, but also rotting autumn leaves, wet hay, wood smoke . . .
He wrenched his mind away from the battlefields of America because, damn it, Betsy’s younger sister was about to make a scene that people wouldn’t readily forget. Vomiting Viola wouldn’t do well on the marriage market.
Behind Betsy, Lady Tallow had returned to her original topic. “The girl’s peculiar, if you ask me,” she hissed. “Of course, she doesn’t have bad blood, unlike . . .” She finally lowered her voice to a discreet level, apparently realizing that insulting the children of her host might not be a good idea.
Betsy was turned in her chair to face Viola. “Oh, no,” Jeremy heard. “Viola, please don’t.”
Jeremy would have snorted, but there wasn’t time. “Please” would never stop his stomach from emptying if the right smell came along. His body had learned the trick of expelling emotion along with his breakfast, and he had the feeling Viola was a kindred spirit.
He pushed back in his chair and launched into his favorite, well-practiced performance: drunken lout. He stumbled, clutched the back of Betsy’s chair, and let out a loud belch, followed by a curse and a belated “’Scuse me, ladies.”
Back when he was in school, he had specialized in belches on demand. Who would have thought they’d be so useful, years on?
Everyone in the vicinity turned to him, surprised. No—strike that. Thaddeus glanced up and then went back to eating smoked haddock. Of course, he had been party to many a self-induced belch when they were schoolboys.
Viola was staring straight down at her plate, her lips tightly pressed together. That wouldn’t do.
He reached back and grabbed his cup of cold tea and held it high. “Let’s drink to the duke’s health! Nothing better than a little tipple in the morning!”
He realized suddenly that most of the room was male—since married ladies were allowed to take breakfast on a tray in their beds—and they agreed with him. A number of narrow glances toward the footmen suggested that they were taking affront at not being offered a stronger libation than tea.
“What a fraud,” Betsy muttered, under her breath, but he heard her.
Briefly he considered dumping the tea on her instead of her sister—but no. Viola needed a shock, no matter how much he’d like to see Betsy’s bosom drenched. Other women flaunted their assets but Betsy hid hers from view.
Not realizing, obviously, that it only made her more enticing.
“We should have a toast,” he said, lurching again, and then falling back against Betsy’s chair in hopes of exasperating her.
He hoisted the teacup in the air and bellowed, “To Lady Tallow and her talent for . . .” He let silence hang in the air just long enough so that all the men who had succumbed to her obvious charms would wonder. “. . . gossip!”
As he brought the cup to his lips, he pretended to slip sideways, flinging the tea in a graceful arc so that it coursed directly down Viola’s neck and then completed its arc by splashing over Lady Tallow.
Viola reacted to cold tea on her neck with a squeal, jumping to her feet, which knocked Jeremy to the side . . . allowing him to slump into Betsy’s lap.
“Oh, hello,” he said, bracing his elbow on the table so he didn’t crush her. His legs sprawled across the floor. “Do I know you?”
Lady Tallow was shrieking; behind them chatter filled the room as if a chicken coop had admitted a fox.
“You don’t even smell like brandy,” Betsy said, not sounding angry. “Why are you bothering?”
Jeremy shrugged.
“That was very clumsy, Lord Jeremy,” Viola said, her cheeks pink with indignation. She turned and marched out of the room, and he was gratified to notice that she didn’t run, even when hailed by a number of guests on the way out of the room.
Apparently, cold water to the back of the neck was as effective for her as it was for him when it came to preventing vomiting.
“Do I have to get up?” he asked Betsy. “Your lap is remarkably soft.”
“I’m about to dump my tea on you, and it’s hot rather than cold.”
Her expression was rather odd; if he had to guess, he’d say that she didn’t mind the fact he was sprawled on top of her.
Most of the Wildes had blue eyes. It was part of their charm: They were a pack of beautiful people, tall and athletic, with ar
istocratic cheekbones and the rest of it. Betsy’s eyes were darker blue than her brothers’.
“Very well,” Jeremy said, hoisting himself back onto his feet. “I should make my apologies to Lady Tallow.”
“You needn’t bother,” the lady said acidly. She was patting her bosom with a linen napkin while a footman hovered with an additional stack. “You, sir, are a reprobate who has no place in polite society! To this point, we have excused your disgraceful behavior due to your birth and your grievous circumstances, but no gentleman acts the drunken lout at breakfast.”
“Only in the evening?” Jeremy asked curiously.
“What?”
“Are we gentlemen allowed to be drunken louts in the evening?” he clarified to Lady Tallow. “I gather you make exceptions for me at one time of day but not another.”
“In the normal course of events, no. Only those who have sacrificed their entire platoon are allowed such leniency.” The lady’s voice rose. “We make exceptions for—for those men, though thankfully, there are not many. Most English gentlemen put their soldiers’ safety above their own.”
The words struck him like a blow, and for a second the world rocked around him. Suddenly, in the corner of his eye, the great silver escutcheon on the sideboard began sparking light as if it were on fire.
He clenched his teeth and focused on Lady Tallow, willing himself to ignore the glinting lights invading his vision. He refused to show any reaction to her words. Refused.
Sickeningly, he was no more in control of his body and brain than Viola had been. She had been about to vomit; he was on the verge of collapse.
Lady Tallow’s bosom was heaving under the napkin as if a live animal were concealed there. “Hiding behind a tree, as I heard, with no survivors to say different!” she spat.
The London Times had reported on the loss of his entire platoon, hailing him as a hero. He thought about his men every day—every hour—yet he’d fooled himself into believing that perhaps society didn’t think of him in the same cruel terms he thought of himself.
“In fact, I heard on the best of authority that Thomas Cromie let it be known on his deathbed that you were nowhere to be seen. Thomas deserved better than that; he was a baron’s son!”
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