Sherry Thomas - Beguiling the Beauty

A woman’s reputation was as fragile as a dragonfly’s wings. “Thank goodness Fitz is levelheaded.”

“Yes, he is very good in a crisis,” said Millie, slipping the letter into her pocket. “Do you think it will help to introduce the duke to Helena?”

“No, but we still must try.”

“Let us hope the duke does not fall for the wrong sister,” said Millie with a small smile.

“Pah,” said Venetia. “I am nearly middle-aged and almost certainly older than he is.”

“I’m sure His Grace will be more than willing to overlook a very minor age difference.”

“I’ve had more than my share of husbands and plan to be happily unmarried for the rest of my—”

Footsteps. Helena’s.

“Of course I shan’t bestow my hand freely,” Venetia said, raising her voice. “But if the duke woos me with a monster of a fossil, who knows how I might reward him.”

Helena listened carefully. Venetia was in her bath. Millie had gone to change out of her walking gown. She should be safe enough.

She pulled aside the curtain and opened the window of the parlor. The boy she’d employed to take her letters to Andrew directly to the post office was there, waiting. The boy had his hand extended. She set a letter and two shining copper pennies in his palm and quickly closed the window again.

Now on to the letters that had arrived for her in the afternoon. She looked for any that had come in Fitzhugh & Co.’s own envelopes. Before she’d left England, she’d given a supply of those to Andrew with the instruction to have her American address typed on the front once he had it. Then he was to draw a small asterisk under the postage stamp, so that she might know it was from him and not her secretary.

Except on this particular letter, he did not put an asterisk, but a tiny heart beneath the queen’s likeness. She shook her head fondly. Oh, her sweet Andrew.

My Dearest,

What joy! What bliss! When I called at the poste restante office in St. Martin’s le Grand this morning, there were not one, not two, but three letters from you. My pleasure is all the greater for the disappointment of the past two days, when my trips into London bore no fruits at the post office.

And as for your question, the work on volume three of A History of East Anglia comes along slowly. King Æthelberht is about to be killed and Offa of Mercia soon to subjugate the kingdom. For some reason I rather dread this part of the history, but I believe my pace should pick up again when I reach the rebellion thirty years later that would restore independence to the Kingdom of the East Angles.

I’d like to write more. But I must be on my way home—I am due to call on my mother at Lawton Priory and you know how much she deplores unpunctuality, especially mine.

So I will end with a fervent wish for your early return.

Your servant

Helena shook her head. She’d instructed Andrew never to sign his name on his letters. That precaution became moot when he referred to both his book and his mother’s house by name. But this was not his fault. If he were capable of subterfuge, he wouldn’t be the man she loved.

She was tucking the letter into the inside pocket of her jacket when Venetia returned to the room, smiling. “What do you say we make a foray to Boston tomorrow, my love, and see what their milliners have to offer? Those hats you’ve brought are perfectly serviceable for speaking to professors and lady students. But we must do better for meeting dukes.”

“He will have eyes only for you.”

“Balderdash,” said Venetia firmly. “You are one of the loveliest women I know. Besides, if he has any sense, he will know that the best way to judge a woman is to observe how she treats other women. And when he sees you with your plain hat from two Seasons ago, he will immediately conclude that I am a selfish cow who ornaments myself like a Christmas tree and leaves you dressed in rags.”

If Venetia wanted Helena to believe that she was interested in the duke, then she shouldn’t have spent the four years since she became a widow for the second time cordially turning down every proposal that had come her way. In fact, Helena was convinced Venetia would swim the English Channel before she took another husband.

But Helena would play along, as she’d played along since Venetia unexpectedly turned up at Huntington. “All right, then, but only for you, and only because you are getting on in years and soon will only have gentlemen callers when they mistake your door for their grandmother’s.”

Venetia laughed, spectacularly beautiful. “Piffle. Twenty-nine isn’t that old—yet. But it’s true I might not have another chance of becoming a duchess if this one goes by. So you’d better have a proper hat.”

“I will allow you to select one for me that looks like a carnival.”

Venetia placed her arm around Helena. “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if you met the perfect man this Season and accepted his proposal? Then we could have a double wedding.”

I’ve already met the perfect man. I won’t marry anyone else.

Helena smiled. “Yes, wouldn’t it?”

She was dressing—buttoning her combination, pulling on her stockings, stepping into her petticoat, her motions unhurried, dancerlike. Her back was to him, but the vanity mirror provided an unobstructed view of the rest of her. He remained in bed, his head propped up on his palm, and watched the ripple and sway of her dark, unbound hair.

Outside, a woodpecker tapped diligently. Inside, the late afternoon sun receded from the room, the wedge of dappled, coppery light on the ceiling growing ever more indistinct. Her twilit beauty was less precise—as if she had been turned into an Impressionist painting, brushstrokes of color and shadow. He could look at her without feeling as if he must shield his eyes or risk damaging them.

He reached out, took a loose curl of her hair, and wound it about his fingers, bringing her closer to him.

She acquiesced easily, sitting down at the edge of the bed and looping an arm around his shoulders. “Haven’t you had enough of me?” she asked, smirking.

“Never.”

“Well, no more for you now, sir—I must summon my maid. And why aren’t you getting ready?”

He stroked the inside of her elbow. “I’ll start in another quarter hour. Meanwhile I’ll use you to help me pass the time.”

She laughed and slipped away from his grasp. “Later. After the ball—maybe.”

The woodpecker struck ever louder.

Christian bolted upright in his bed. The room was dim, its recesses murky; the fire in the grate had burned down to embers. There was no one with him, beautiful or otherwise. It was the morning of his Harvard lecture and someone was knocking at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

Parks, his valet, entered. “Good morning, Your Grace.”

“Morning,” he said, flinging aside the covers and getting out of bed.

The dream, which he’d never experienced before, had been so real. He could have described the translucent muslin curtain on the window, the stylized vines of the Oriental carpet on which she’d stood, the exact length and texture of her hair.

But it was not the intensity of the details that had disoriented him—after some of his more prurient dreams, he could have drawn her with great anatomical precision. Rather, it was the affectionate domesticity, the easy intimacy and sweetness.

“Sir,” said Parks. “Your water grows cold. Shall I fetch you another basin?”

How long had Christian been standing before the washstand, daydreaming, the way a petty thief might yearn toward the vault beneath the Bank of England?