Winning the Wallflower

by Eloisa James

  “I knew this would come to grief,” she announced, stopping just inside the door and dropping her gloves to the floor rather than handing them to the footman to her right.

  Zenobia relished a good drama, and when inebriated was prone to informing a whole dinner table that she could have played Lady Macbeth better than Sarah Siddons. “I told you once, if I told you a hundred times, Cornelius, that girl is too pretty for her own good. And I was right. Here she is, enceinte, and all of London party to the news except for me.”

  “I’m not—” Linnet said.

  But she was drowned out by her father, who chose to avoid the question at hand and go on the attack. “It’s not my daughter’s fault that she takes after her mother.”

  “My sister was as pure as the driven snow,” Zenobia bellowed back.

  The battle was properly engaged now, and there would be no stopping it.

  “My wife may have been snowy—and God knows I’m the one to speak to that—but she was certainly warm enough when she cared to be. We all know how fast the Ice Maiden could warm up, particularly when she was around royalty, now I think of it!”

  “Rosalyn deserved a king,” Zenobia screamed. She strode into the room and planted herself as if she were about to shoot an arrow. Linnet recognized the stance: it was just what Mrs. Siddons had done the week before on the Covent Garden stage, when her Desdemona repudiated Othello’s cruel accusations of unfaithfulness.

  Poor Papa was hardly a warrior like Othello, though. The fact was that her dearest mama had been rampantly unfaithful to him, and he knew it. And so did Aunt Zenobia, though she was choosing to play ignorant.

  “I really don’t see that the question is relevant,” Linnet put in. “Mama died some years ago now, and her fondness for royalty is neither here nor there.”

  Her aunt threw her a swooning look. “I will always defend your mother, though she lies in the cold, cold grave.”

  Linnet slumped back in her corner. True, her mother was in the grave. And frankly, she thought she missed her mother more than Zenobia did, given that the sisters had fought bitterly every time they met. Mostly over men, it had to be admitted. Though to her credit, her aunt wasn’t nearly as trollopy as her mama had been.

  “It’s the beauty,” her father was saying. “It’s gone to Linnet’s head, just as it went to Rosalyn’s. My wife thought beauty gave her license to do whatever she liked—”

  “Rosalyn never did anything untoward!” Zenobia interrupted.

  “She skirted respectability for years,” Lord Sundon continued, raising his voice. “And now her daughter has followed in her footsteps, and Linnet is ruined. Ruined!”

  Zenobia opened her mouth—and then snapped it shut. There was a pause. “Rosalyn is hardly the question here,” she said finally, patting her hair. “We must concentrate on dear Linnet now. Stand up, dear.”

  Linnet stood up.

  “Five months, I’d say,” Zenobia stated. “How on earth you managed to hide that from me, I don’t know. Why, I was as shocked as anyone last night. The Countess of Derby was quite sharp with me, thinking I’d been concealing it. I had to admit that I knew nothing of it, and I’m not entirely sure she believed me.”

  “I am not carrying a child,” Linnet said, enunciating the words slowly.

  “She said the same last night,” her father confirmed. “And earlier this morning, she didn’t look it.” But he peered at her waist. “Now she does.”

  Linnet pushed down the cloth that billowed out just under her breasts. “See, I’m not enceinte. There’s nothing there but cloth.”

  “My dear, you’ll have to tell us sometime,” Zenobia said, taking out a tiny mirror and peering at herself. “It’s not as if it’s going anywhere. At this rate, you’ll be bigger than a house in a matter of a few months. I myself retired to the country as soon as my waistline expanded even a trifle.”

  “What are we going to do with her?” her father moaned, collapsing into a chair as suddenly as a puppet with cut strings.

  “Nothing you can do,” Zenobia said, powdering her nose. “No one wants a cuckoo in the nest. You’ll have to send her abroad and see if she can catch someone there, after all this unpleasantness is over, of course. You’d better double her dowry. Thankfully, she’s an heiress. Someone will take her on.”

  She put down her powder puff and shook her finger at Linnet. “Your mother would be very disappointed, my dear. Didn’t she teach you anything?”

  “I suppose you mean that Rosalyn should have trained her in the arts of being as dissipated as she herself was,” her father retorted. But he was still drooping in his seat, and had obviously lost his fire.

  “I did not sleep with the prince,” Linnet said, as clearly and as loudly as she could. “I might have done so, obviously. Perhaps if I had, he would have felt constrained to marry me now. But I chose not to.”

  Her father groaned and dropped his head onto the back of his chair.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Zenobia said, narrowing her eyes. “At least royalty is some sort of excuse. If this child is the result of anything less than ducal blood, I don’t want to hear a word about it.”

  “I didn’t—” Linnet tried.

  Her aunt cut her off with a sharp gesture. “I just realized, Cornelius, that this might be the saving of you.” She turned to Linnet. “Tell us who fathered that child, and your father will demand marriage. No one below a prince would dare to refuse him.”

  Without pausing for breath, she swung back to her brother-in-law. “You might have to fight a duel, Cornelius. I suppose you have pistols somewhere in this house, don’t you? Didn’t you threaten to fight one with Lord Billetsford years ago?”

  “After finding him in bed with Rosalyn,” Linnet’s father said. He didn’t even sound mournful, just matter-of-fact. “New bed; we’d had it only a week or two.”

  “My sister had many passions,” Zenobia said fondly.

  “I thought you just said she was white as snow!” the viscount snapped back.

  “None of them touched her soul! She died in a state of grace.”

  No one was inclined to argue with this, so Zenobia continued. “At any rate, you’d better pull out those pistols, Cornelius, and see if they still work. You might have to threaten to kill the man. Though in my experience if you double the dowry, it’ll all come around quickly enough.”

  “There’s no man to shoot,” Linnet said.

  Zenobia snorted. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try for virgin birth, my love. I can’t imagine that it worked very well back in Jerusalem. Every time the bishop talks about it at Christmastime, I can’t help thinking that the poor girl must have had a miserable time trying to get people to believe her.”

  “I can’t imagine why you’re bringing scripture into this conversation,” Linnet’s father said. “We’re talking about princes, not gods.”

  Linnet groaned. “This dress just makes me look plump.”

  Zenobia sank into a chair. “Do you mean to tell me that you aren’t carrying a child?”

  “I’ve been saying that. I didn’t sleep with the prince, or anyone else either.”

  There was a mournful pause while the truth at last sunk in. “God Almighty, you’re ruined, and you didn’t even eat the gingerbread,” her aunt said, finally. “What’s more, just displaying your waistline to its best advantage would be no help at this point. People would simply assume that you had, as one might say, taken care of the problem.”

  “After the prince refused her to marry her,” the viscount said heavily. “I’d assume it myself, under the circumstances.”

  “It’s unfair,” Linnet said fiercely. “With Mama’s—ah—reputation, people naturally expected that I might be rather flirtatious—”

  “That’s an understatement,” her father said. “They thought you’d be a baggage, and now they know you’re one. Except you’re not.”

  “It’s the beauty,” her aunt said, preening a little. “The women in my family are simply cursed by
our beauty. Look at dear Rosalyn, dying so young.”

  “I don’t see that it’s cursed you,” the viscount said, rather rudely.

  “Oh, but it has,” Zenobia said. “It has, it has, it has. It taught me what could have been, had I not had the chains of birth holding me back. I could have graced the world’s stages, you know. Rosalyn too. I expect that’s why she was so—”

  “So what?” the viscount said, leaping on it.

  “Irresistible,” Zenobia said.

  Linnet’s father snorted. “Impure, more like.”

  “She knew that she could have married the finest in the land,” Zenobia said. “And you see, that same dream caught our darling Linnet in its coils and now she’s ruined.”

  “Rosalyn could not have married the finest in the land,” the viscount said. “There’s a reason for the Royal Marriage Laws, you know.” He pointed a finger at Linnet. “Didn’t you even think of that before you created such a scandal with young Augustus? For Christ’s sake, everyone knows that he up and married a German woman a few years ago. In Rome, I believe. The king himself had to get involved and annul the marriage.”

  “I didn’t know until yesterday,” Linnet said. “When the prince told me so.”

  “No one tells girls that sort of thing,” her aunt said dismissively. “If you were so worried about her, Cornelius, why didn’t you trot around to those parties and watch over her yourself?”

  “Because I was busy! And I found a woman to chaperone her, since you were too lazy to do it yourself. Mrs. Hutchins. Perfectly respectable in every way, and seemed to grasp the problem, too. Where is that woman? She assured me that she would keep your name as white as the driven snow.”

  “She refused to come downstairs.”

  “Afraid to face the music,” he muttered. “And where’s your governess? She’s another one. I told her and told her that you had to be twice as chaste to make up for your mother’s reputation.”

  “Mrs. Flaccide took insult last night when you said she was a limb of Satan and accused her of turning me into a doxy.”

  “I’d had a spot or two of drink,” her father said, looking utterly unrepentant. “I drowned my sorrows after I was told to my face—to my face!— that my only daughter had been debauched.”

  “She left about an hour later,” Linnet continued. “And I doubt she’s coming back, because Tinkle says that she took a great deal of silver with her.”

  “The silver is irrelevant,” Zenobia said. “You should never make the best servants angry, because they invariably know where all the valuables are kept. Far more important, I expect your governess knew all about any billets-doux that royal twig might have sent you?”

  “He didn’t write me any love letters, if that’s what you mean. But early one morning about a month ago he did throw strawberries at my bedchamber window. She and Mrs. Hutchins said at the time that we mustn’t let anyone know.”

  “And now Flaccide is out telling the world about it,” her aunt announced. “You really are a fool, Cornelius. You should have paid her five hundred pounds on the spot and shipped her off to Suffolk. Now Flaccide is out there turning one strawberry into a whole field. She’ll have Linnet carrying twins.”

  Linnet thought her governess would likely leap at the chance. They’d never really liked each other. In truth, women rarely liked her. From the moment she debuted four months ago, the other girls had clustered into groups and giggled behind their hands. But no one ever let Linnet in on the joke.

  Zenobia reached out and rang the bell. “I can’t think why you haven’t offered me any tea, Cornelius. Linnet’s life may have taken a new corner, but we still have to eat.”

  “I’m ruined, and you want tea?” her father moaned.

  Tinkle opened the door so quickly that Linnet knew he’d been listening in, not that she was surprised.

  “We’ll have tea and something to eat along with it,” Zenobia told him. “You’d better bring along something for reducing as well.”

  The butler frowned.

  “Cucumbers, vinegar, something of that nature,” she said impatiently. When he closed the door, she waved at Linnet’s bosom. “We must do something about that. No one would describe you as plump, my dear, but you’re not exactly a wraith either, are you?”

  Linnet counted to five again. “My figure is exactly like my mother’s. And yours.”

  “Satan’s temptation,” her father said morosely. “It isn’t seemly so uncovered.”

  “No such luck,” Linnet said. “I got a prince, but the king of darkness never made an appearance.”

  “Augustus couldn’t be even a minor devil,” her aunt said consideringly. “I’m not surprised he didn’t manage to seduce you, now I think on it. He’s a bit of a nincompoop.”

  “There shouldn’t be styles that make a young girl look like a matron with a babe on the way,” Lord Sundon stated. “If there is, I don’t want a part of it. That is, I wouldn’t want a part of it if I were the type to wear dresses. That is, if I were a woman.”

  “You’re getting more foolish every year,” Zenobia observed. “Why my sister ever agreed to marry you, I’ll never know.”

  “Mama loved Papa,” Linnet said as firmly as she could. She’d fastened on to that fact years ago, in the aftermath of a confusing evening when she’d encountered her mother with another gentleman in an intimate setting, engaged in a very intimate activity.

  “I love your father,” her mother had told her at the time. “But darling, love is just not enough for women such as myself. I must have adoration, verses, poetry, flowers, jewels . . . not to mention the fact that François is built like a god and hung like a horse.”

  Linnet had blinked at her, and her mother had said, “Never mind, darling, I’ll explain it all later, when you’re a bit older.”

  She never got around to it, but Linnet had somehow managed to garner enough information to interpret what had caught her mother’s attention with regards to François.

  Now her father’s eyes flickered toward her. “Rosalyn loved me the way Augustus loves you. In short: not enough.”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Zenobia cried. “This is enough to send me into the Slough of Despond! Let poor Rosalyn rest in her grave, would you? You make me rue the day she decided to accept your hand.”

  “It’s brought it all back to mind,” the viscount said heavily. “Linnet takes after her mother; anyone can see that.”

  “That’s quite unfair,” Linnet said, scowling at him. “I have been a model of chastity this season. In fact, through my entire life!”

  He frowned. “It’s just that there’s something about you—”

  “You look naughty,” her aunt said, not unkindly. “God help Rosalyn, but this is all her fault. She gave it to you. That dimple, and something in your eyes and about your mouth. You look like a wanton.”

  “A wanton would have had a great deal more fun this season than I had,” Linnet protested. “I’ve been as demure as any young lady in the ton—you can ask Mrs. Hutchins.”

  “It does seem unfair,” Zenobia agreed. A golden drop of honey suspended itself from her crumpet and swung gently before falling onto the pale violet silk of her morning dress.

  “I hope that you told the countess that I was never alone with Augustus at any point,” Linnet said.

  “How could I do that?” Zenobia inquired. “I’m not privy to your social calendar, my dear. I was as shocked as the dear countess, I can tell you that.”

  Linnet groaned. “I could strip naked in Almack’s, and still no one would believe that I wasn’t carrying a child, no matter how slim my waist. You practically confirmed it, Aunt Zenobia. And Papa dismissed Miss Flaccide, and I’m quite sure that she’s saying wretched things about me all over London. I truly will have to live abroad, or in the country somewhere.”

  “French men are very easy to please, though there is that inconvenient war going on,” Zenobia said encouragingly. “But I’ve got another idea.”

  Linnet cou
ldn’t bring herself to ask, but her father asked wearily, “What is it?”

  “Not it—him.”

  “Who?”

  “Yelverton, Windebank’s heir.”

  “Windebank? Who the devil’s that? Do you mean Yonnington—Walter Yonnington? Because if his son is anything like his father, I wouldn’t let Linnet near him, even if she were carrying a child.”

  “Very kind of you, Papa,” Linnet murmured. Since her aunt had not offered her a crumpet, she helped herself.

  “Reducing, my dear. Think about reducing,” Zenobia said in a kindly yet firm tone.

  Linnet tightened her mouth and put extra butter on her crumpet.

  Her aunt sighed. “Yelverton’s title is Duke of Windebank, Cornelius. Really, I wonder how you manage to make your way around the House of Lords, with your spotty knowledge of the aristocracy.”

  “I know what I need to know,” the viscount said. “And I don’t bother with that I don’t need. If you meant Windebank, why didn’t you just say so?”

  “I was thinking of his son,” Zenobia explained. “The man’s got the second title, of course. Now let me think . . . I do believe that his given name is something odd. Peregrine, Penrose—Piers, that’s it.”

  “He sounds like a dock,” Lord Sundon put in.

  “Mrs. Hutchins called me a light frigate this morning,” Linnet said. “A dock might be just the thing for me.”

  Zenobia shook her head. “That’s just the kind of remark that got you in this situation, Linnet. I’ve told you time and again, all that cleverness does you no good. People would like a lady to be beautiful, but they expect her to be ladylike, in short: sweet, compliant, and refined.”

  “And yet you are universally taken for a lady,” Linnet retorted.

  “I am married,” Zenobia says. “Or I was, until Etheridge passed on. I don’t need to show sweetness and light. You do. You’d better polish up some ladylike chatter before you get to Wales to meet Yelverton. His title would be Earl of Marchant. Or would it be Mossford? I can’t quite remember. I’ve never met him, of course.”