by Mara
“Damaris, Damaris, don’t you know the world hunts down and slaughters the honest?” He came around the desk and took her hands, raising them to his lips, brushing a kiss across each, his eyes never leaving hers.
She wasn’t honest then. If she had been she would have laughed, or cried, or done something disastrously revealing.
Against her fingers, he said, “I cannot tell my slippery secrets to an honest woman.”
“I said honest, not indiscreet.”
“But if you are questioned, can you lie?”
He was still holding her hands. She curled her fingers around his and didn’t want to let go. “I will lie in your cause. Please share what secrets you can, Fitzroger.”
“Call me Fitz.”
It caught her unawares, and she pulled her hands free before knowing she was going to do it. “Why does that bother me?” She answered herself. “Because we cannot be more than friends. We cannot.”
He seemed to feel no trace of her anguish. “My friends call me Fitz.”
“And those who are more than friends?”
His lips twitched. “Fitz.”
“No one calls you Octavius? No one at all? It has a certain dignity.”
“It means eighth, and where’s the dignity in that? Besides, it’s too distant, wouldn’t you say, for lovers?” He leaned his hips back against the desk. “What would you call me if we were lovers?”
She caught her breath, but if he wanted to carry this to wicked heights she’d soar with him. For a little while, at least.
“A short form?” she suggested. “Octi?”
He grinned. “No.”
“Or it could be put into plain English—Number Eight. You’re right. It is a ridiculous way of naming children. Perhaps it would work better in French, Huit.” She cocked her head. “Wheat does suit your hair.”
“Rough as hay?”
“No.”
Their words summoned that kiss in the coach, when she’d gripped his hair, which wasn’t silky, but wasn’t coarse either. In her memory it seemed alive as he was alive in every bone, sinew, and muscle.
She wasn’t sure who moved, how she came to be in his arms, but she recognized the inevitable crescendo of the duet they had been singing. She slid her fingers into that curly, wheat-colored hair and blended her mouth desperately with his. She pressed closer, or he pressed her closer with his strong arms, a hand between her shoulders, another commanding the small of her back.
Duchess of Bridgewater, she reminded herself, but it was, after all, only a kiss....
Only a kiss, but able to wipe all thought from her mind, able to make her a creature of fierce physical passion. She twined her arms around him, needing to be closer, far closer than clothing allowed.
His mouth broke with hers to trail little kisses across her cheek and around her ear. She wanted more and turned her head, seeking his lips again.
“My nurse,” he murmured, “called me Tottie.”
She broke into giggles. “I couldn’t possibly!”
“Not even in private?”
She shook her head against his shoulder.
“Not even,” he asked softly, “in the secrecy of a curtained bed?”
Her legs weakened and she clung to him, but then she found the strength to push out of his arms. Away from the searing fire.
“I apologize,” he said, letting her go, turning sober and thoughtful. In a moment she’d lose him, and that she could not bear.
“Don’t! Apologize, I mean. I liked it. And I need practice. In flirting and such...” She needed to talk them out of this dangerous corner. “For court. Won’t there be flirtation and kissing at court?”
“Lesson number one,” he said tersely, “don’t kiss anyone like that at court. Lesson number two—don’t be alone with anyone like this at court. Lesson number three—avoid men like me at court.”
“Oh, my!” she declared, hand to chest. “Court is full of men like you, sir?”
He didn’t smile. “In the baser respects, yes.”
“And in the higher ones, in sweet charms?”
She immediately wished the words back, but then a raised voice in the next room saved them. By silent agreement they returned to the desk and settled as if they’d spent all their time absorbed by papers.
Lady Thalia came in, beaming. “That’s so much better! Oh, dear, have Genova and Ashart slipped away? Naughty, naughty, but they’ll soon be wed, and I’m sure you two have been good. Damaris, dear, I do think you should change to dine. So inconvenient in this cold house, but I’m sure Sophia will expect some formality.”
Damaris hesitated, hoping Fitzroger—Fitz—would offer to escort her across the house. When he didn’t, she left alone.
In a house like this it was a convenience to find Maisie in the room, engaged in needlework. Damaris changed quickly into silk, choosing a subdued blue-and-white stripe because it really was time to be sensible. She even added a large gauze fichu to fill in the low bodice.
Demure modesty might soothe the dowager as well, so that she’d be more likely to surrender Betty Prease’s documents. But what the point of obtaining those was, she still had no idea.
As she sat so that Maisie could tidy her hair, however, Damaris knew that Betty Prease was not the mystery she sought to unravel here. That was Fitz and herself. She had only a few days before they moved on to London, when everything would change. There she would be under Lady Arradale’s eye. She would have little time with Fitz, and probably none alone. She’d enter society and be expected to choose her titled husband.
“Where’s your mink muff, Miss Damaris?” Maisie asked.
Damaris blushed for no reason at all. “Left in the hall.” It wasn’t actually a lie. “I’ll collect it when I go down.”
A little while later, however, a maid brought it up. “With Mr. Fitzroger’s compliments, miss.”
Damaris couldn’t help a thrill that he’d thought of it, even that he’d recently touched it, but Maisie was scowling and muttering something about “that man.”
As she put on her red cloak and took the muff, Damaris asked, “Why are you so set against Mr. Fitzroger?”
Maisie reddened. “He’s trying to marry you, that’s why.”
“No, he isn’t. And if he were I wouldn’t. But if I did, how does it concern you?”
“Because he’ll break your heart for sure.” But Maisie looked away and was fiddling with her skirt.
“There’s more to it than that.”
Maisie worked her mouth, but then burst out, “I want to be a ladyship’s maid, miss! Down below, we take our rank from our employer. With you as a marchioness I’d have been one of the highest. It would have been ever so lovely. If you marry that one, I’ll be no better off than I am now.”
Damaris shook her head. “I had no idea. How extraordinary.” She’d better not tell Maisie there was a chance of her becoming a duchess in the servants’ hierarchy or there’d be no living with her. “I can’t marry to suit you, Maisie. And besides, wouldn’t you rather marry, yourself, than be even a duchess in the servant’s hall?”
Maisie blushed. “I might, Miss Damaris. But only to the right man.”
“Then we think alike on these things.”
“Then you won’t fall into trouble with that one?” Maisie asked.
“I intend to make the right decision,” Damaris said, and left the room.
She found Fitzroger outside her door.
“I have a room here,” he said, pointing to the next door. “It was to have been Lady Thalia’s, but, of course, she’s with Genova. My usual room is on the other side of the Little Library, but Ash wanted to be close, so I agreed to let him use it.”
“Oh,” Damaris said, fighting laughter. She’d never heard him rattle on before. Was he as flustered as she? And for the same reason?
He must be. He’d not have kissed her earlier if he’d been in control of himself. Her mind was a mess, and she felt half-mad, but at least he might be in the same state. He
offered an arm and she linked hers with it, feeling as if bubbles floated in her brain, bubbles of wicked possibilities that made it impossible to make sensible decisions.
She’d read stories of people hurtling to disaster this way—Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bothwell—and never understood it. Now she did, and it was just as well that she had his arm as they went downstairs, for she could easily have missed a step in her distracted, lightheaded state.
The dowager awaited them amid the faded elegance of a small dining room. She was frosty, but the room was warm. They all took their places—Ashart and Genova on one side of the table, Damaris and Fitzroger on the other, with the dowager and Lady Thalia at head and foot.
Lady Ashart rang a bell, and servants came in to place the first course of dishes on the table. The food was plain but tolerable. Damaris ate, trying to distract herself from Fitzroger by looking for ways to turn the conversation to Betty Prease. Instead it wandered from the weather to books to minor matters of public affairs.
By the time the second course was placed on the table, she was ready to raise the subject out of nowhere. But at last Ashart said, “We’ve been going through the old Prease papers, Grandy. I hope you don’t mind.”
“A bit late if I do,” the dowager said, but without an increase in ice. “I can’t imagine why.”
“We thought it would be amusing to look for evidence of the liaison between Betty Crowley and the king.”
Damaris ate pear tart but watched the dowager. She thought the plump face stilled, but it could be simple annoyance.
“I assure you,” the dowager said, “royal blood does run in your veins, Ashart. It is written in your features, if nowhere else.”
“I thought so, too,” Genova said.
Lady Ashart ignored her.
Fitzroger said, “I thought the resemblance closer to Charles the First than to Charles the Second. And perhaps,” he added, “to Prince Henry.”
Damaris had automatically turned to him as he spoke, so when she looked back at the dowager any immediate reaction had passed. She sensed something in the air, however, and Lady Ashart seemed changed—lips tighter, eyes fixed.
Prince Henry?
The discussion seemed in danger of dying, so she asked at random, “What sort of woman was your famous ancestor, Lady Ashart? A fascinating beauty, I’m sure.”
The dowager raised her double chins. “She was a lady much admired by all who knew her, and for more than her appearance. A lady of quiet dignity and pious goodness, free of all interest in worldly pleasures.”
Damaris stared, almost choking on the obvious question. How, then, did she become lover of Old Rowley, the most decadent king of England?
“I always supposed her virtues arose from penitence,” said Lady Thalia.
“If she had anything to repent!” The dowager rose to her feet, managing to make it look majestic, even though the elevation from sitting to standing was not very great. “I’m sure you would all prefer to remove upstairs.”
With that she marched out of the room and closed the door with an eloquent click.
Eyes met eyes around the table.
“Sharing the king’s bed is a holy duty?” Ashart offered.
Damaris expected Fitzroger to make the suggestion, but when he didn’t she said, “Or it never happened. It’s all a tale.”
“Oh, it happened,” Lady Thalia said. “Everyone knew that Randolph Prease was quite incapable of... Well”—she waved a vague hand—“his war wounds, you know.”
Damaris realized then that Lady Thalia might know a great deal about these events. She’d still been a girl at the turn of the century, but she must have known people who’d been part of King Charles’s court. She might even have known men who fought in the Civil War.
Ashart drained the last of his wine. “Grandy can’t have it both ways. Either Betty was the king’s whore, or we don’t have royal blood.”
Again, no one said the obvious. “Or,” said Damaris, “there was a secret marriage.”
It created a startling ripple of silence.
Lady Thalia said, “How very intriguing.”
“But impossible.” Ashart rose and assisted Genova from her seat. “Betty conceived my great-grandfather in 1660 at the time of the Restoration. The newly restored king would wench with anyone, but he’d never have married a commoner. He needed money, power, and a bride who created royal alliances abroad. That’s why he married Catherine of Braganza. Come. I’ll order tea served upstairs.”
Fitzroger assisted Lady Thalia, so Damaris managed for herself, thinking furiously.
When they left the room, Thalia had one of Fitzroger’s arms, and Damaris should have taken his other. Instead she walked on Thalia’s other side. “What do you think, Lady Thalia? Was Mistress Betty the king’s mistress?”
“You’re tempting me to be naughty,” the old lady said with a twinkle, “but let us say her child was not fathered by Randolph Prease.”
Damaris understood. Randolph Prease had been incapable of fathering a child because of his war wounds that had damaged that part of his body. That, however, was irrelevant. No one thought him the father. Charles II was accepted as the father of Betty’s son, but now there were the conflicting details.
As Ashart said, King Charles would never have married a commoner. But the dowager insisted Betty Crowley was virtuous.
Fitzroger had introduced the name of Henry Stuart, the forgotten prince, the one who’d died tragically young, surely at about the time Betty Crowley was conceiving her child. Once thought of, it was fascinating, but with alarming implications.
When they entered the Hunt Room, Damaris was wondering what to say, what to ask, but Ashart spoke first. “Was Betty Prease pious and good all her life, Thalia? Or was she a fatal siren in her youth?”
Lady Thalia sat in a chair near the fire, putting her feet on a footstool. “I met her only twice, dear, and in her later years. Once was when I was staying in Cambridgeshire with the Wallboroughs. We all went to Storton House for a ball. That was where my brother met the dowager—Sophia Prease in those days—which might have been better avoided. Then she was at the wedding. In her widowhood she lived in a private suite of rooms at Storton and rarely emerged except to engage in good works. The area is plentifully provided with almshouses and charity hospitals.”
“Not a bad thing,” Genova said.
“But evidence of a guilty conscience,” Ashart pointed out. “Conundrum solved. Betty Crowley let virtue slip as a girl, perhaps just once, and did penance all her days. I have royal blood in my veins, safely from a bastard line, but Grandy doesn’t care to admit her grandmother’s frailty.”
Two maids came in bearing the tea trays. Thalia waved to Genova. “You tend to it all, dear. You’ll soon be mistress here.”
As Genova did so, Damaris thought that Lady Thalia was not one fraction as silly as she appeared. That had been a pointed reminder for the maids to take back to the servants’ hall.
She had to admit that Ashart’s summary made sense. She could feel in herself how easy it would be to let wisdom and virtue slip under the attraction of a certain sort of man. It didn’t matter whether Betty had sinned with wicked, worldly King Charles, or with his youngest brother, who had been much closer to her age.
It mattered only if there had been a marriage.
Because if Prince Henry had fathered Charles Prease, and if he’d also married Betty Crowley, the line that came down to Ashart was legitimate. She didn’t fully understand the royal succession, but she thought it might mean that Ashart had a claim to the throne of England.
Now there was a state secret to shrivel the skin.
There’d been so much bloodshed over the throne. First the Duke of Monmouth, then the uprising in 1715 to try to install James II’s son instead of the Hanoverian, George I. Most recently the one in 1745 that had led to so many deaths, including the bloody slaughter at Culloden.
Damaris was too young to remember
the events of 1745, but stories about it had been vivid during her childhood, for the rebel army had come close to Worksop during its march on London. For a little while it had seemed the Jacobites would make it there and succeed.
She looked to Fitzroger, who stood by a window, lost in thought. She’d give much more than a penny to read his mind.
Lady Thalia proposed an evening of whist.
Perhaps Fitz read her reaction, for he said, “Why don’t we play games of another sort? After all, once she’s at court we don’t want Damaris to lose her fortune at loo or faro.”
“As if I would!”
He looked at her. “A passion for gaming can be as unexpected and irresistible as any other sort.”
She hoped she wasn’t as pink as she was hot.
Lady Thalia wasn’t thrilled at the idea, but even she probably realized that they couldn’t play whist all the time.
As far as Damaris was concerned, the card games they played that evening were easier and more fun than whist. They all seemed a silly way to risk money, but as they played with counters in the form of pearl fish, she didn’t mind.
The light died, and candlelight took over. As they explored from dangerous faro to frivolous speculation, Damaris soon realized that Fitz’s warning might have been valid. She thrilled to scoop up a theoretical fortune in guineas and when she lost, it inspired her to play again and try to win them back. She was always so sure her luck would turn. At one point Ashart ordered claret and biscuits, and the wine didn’t improve her self-control.
She pointed that out, and Fitz said, “Another lesson. Card playing is generally accompanied by wine. Learn to keep a steady head. Or at least to know when it’s wobbling.”
It was good advice, applied to love as well as cards. If the passion for winning burned in her, so did passion of another sort. As evening became night this candlelit circle of five wove a dangerous charm, and for her, Fitz burned at the heart of it.
At first he had kept himself slightly apart, but in time the gaiety had caught him. He’d relaxed, and his quick wit and ready smile reached her, touched her, dazzled her. There was that glow again, and now it seemed to her to be the glow of honest joy, as with the fencing.