Лорен Уиллиг - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

“It is a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?” Charlotte automatically reached out to touch his arm and then thought better of it. Letting her hand fall to her side, she tilted her head back to stare at the familiar figure of Sir William Lansdowne, who really did look remarkably like Robert, if he had been wearing gauntlets and breastplate and waving a bloodied sword. “I felt that way, too, initially.”

“I remember,” Robert said, looking not at the murals but at her. And then: “I was sorry to hear about your father.”

Charlotte bit down hard on her lower lip, willing away a sudden prickle of tears. It was ridiculous to turn into a watering pot over something that had happened so very long ago. Eleven years ago, to be precise. By the time her father died, Robert had been five months gone from Girdings, far away across the sea.

“It was a very long time ago,” Charlotte said honestly.

“Even so.”

Lieutenant Fluellen looked curiously from one to the other, his brown eyes as bright and inquisitive as a squirrel’s. Fortunately, Charlotte was spared explanations by the intrusion of a rumbling noise, which became steadily louder.

Both Penelope and Charlotte, who recognized it instantly for what it was, stepped back out of the way as the noise resolved itself into the synchronized rhythm of four pairs of feet. The four sets of feet belonged to four bewigged and powdered footmen, who bore on their shoulders a litter covered with enough gold leaf to beggar Cleopatra. On a throne-like chair in the center of the litter, draped in purple silk fringed with gold, perched none other than the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale, the woman who had launched a thousand ships — as their crews rowed for their lives in the opposite direction. She inspired horses to rear, jaded roués to blanch beneath their rouge, and young fops to jump out of ballroom windows. And she enjoyed every moment of it.

The skimpy dresses in vogue had struck the Dowager Duchess as dangerously republican. The Dowager preferred the fashions of her youth, so she had never stopped wearing them. In honor of Christmas Eve, she was garbed in a gown of rich green brocade glittering with gold thread. Her hair had been piled into a coiffure reminiscent of the work of agitated spiders, crowned with a jaunty sprig of mistletoe.

As the Duchess rapped her fabled cane against the side of the litter, her four bearers came to a practiced halt.

“Good evening, Grandmama,” said Charlotte primly. “You do remember Cousin Robert — ”

“Of course, I remember him! I may have lost my looks, but I still have my wits. So, you’ve come home at last, have you? Took you long enough.”

“Had I known I would receive such a gracious welcome, I would have come sooner.”

“Hogwash,” the Duchess snorted. She gestured imperiously with her cane. “Don’t stand there gawking! Help me out of this thing!”

The footmen stood, impassive, holding their gilded poles, as Lieutenant Fluellen rushed into attendance.

“Wouldn’t a wheeled chair have sufficed?” inquired the prodigal Duke blandly.

The Dowager paused with her hand on Lieutenant Fluellen’s arm, one leg extended over the side. “And break my neck on the stairs? You only wish, my boy! I used to have these lot” — she waved a dismissive hand at the footmen — “carrying me around, but I didn’t want them to get too familiar. Gave them ideas above their station.”

Robert’s mind boggled at the notion of the blank-faced footmen being stirred to uncontrollable passion by the Dowager’s wrinkled face and grasshopper arms.

Tommy simply looked stunned, although that could, in part, have been because the Dowager had landed on his foot in passing.

“Ah, these old legs aren’t what they once were,” mused the Dowager, wiggling a red-heeled shoe. “In my day I could outdance half the men in London. Outrun them, too.” She emitted a short bark of laughter. “Except when I wanted to be caught, that is. Those were the days.” She shook her cane in the face of a practically paralytic Tommy. “Who’s this young sprig and what is he doing in my hall?”

Robert very nobly refrained from pointing out that it was, in fact, his hall. “May I present Tommy Fluellen, late of His Majesty’s service?”

“Welsh?” demanded the Duchess.

“With the leek to prove it,” Tommy replied cheerfully.

The Dowager regarded him thoughtfully. “There was a Welsh princess married into the family in the twelfth century. Angharad, they called her. I doubt you are related.”

The Dowager Duchess turned her gimlet gaze on the Duke, for an inspection that went from his bare head straight down to the mud on the toes of his boots.

“You do have the Lansdowne look about you,” she admitted grudgingly. “At least you would, if you weren’t burnt brown as a savage. What were you thinking, boy?”

“Not of my complexion.”

“Hmph. That’s clear enough. Still, you look more of a Lansdowne than Charlotte.” The Dowager jerked her head in Charlotte’s direction by way of acknowledgment. “ She favors her mother’s people.”

Charlotte was well aware of that. She had heard it often enough over the years she had lived under her grandmother’s care. The Dowager Duchess had never forgiven Charlotte’s father, the future Duke of Dovedale, for running off with a humble vicar’s daughter.

It hadn’t mattered one whit to the Duchess that the Vicar had been the grandson of an earl or that Charlotte’s mother had been undeniably a gentleman’s daughter. The Duchess had had her heart set on a grand match for her only son, the sort of match that could be counted in guineas and acres and influence in Parliament.

They had been happy, though, even in exile. Or perhaps they were happy because they were in exile. When she tried very hard, Charlotte could remember a golden age before she had come to Girdings, when she and her father and mother had lived together in a little house in Surrey, a quaint little two-storied house with dormer windows and ivy growing over the walls and a stone sundial in the garden that professed only to count the happy hours.

The Duchess had never forgiven them for being happy, either.

Ignoring the Duchess, Robert bent his head towards Charlotte. “I regret I never had the honor of meeting your mother.”

“ She was not a Lansdowne,” the Duchess sniffed.

Robert cocked an eyebrow at the Duchess. “If everyone were a Lansdowne, where would be the distinction in being one?”

“Impertinence!” The Duchess’s cane cracked against the tiles like one of Jove’s thunderbolts. “I like that in a man.”

Her cousin caught her eye, making a face of such mock desperation that Charlotte had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. His friend simply looked mesmerized.

“You’ll have the ducal chambers, of course,” said the Duchess. “Don’t look so frightened, boy! You shan’t find me through the connecting door.”

“I wouldn’t want to dispossess you.”

“I occupy the Queen’s chambers.” Having established her proper position, somewhere just to the right of Elizabeth I, the Duchess waved a dismissive hand. “These gels will introduce you to the rest of the party. You may find some acquaintances from India among them. Not a one worth knowing in the lot of them.”

She snapped her fingers, and the polebearers dutifully sank to their knees.

“You!” she barked, and four different potential yous stood to attention all at once. “Yes, you! The one with the leek!”

Lieutenant Fluellen snapped into parade-ground pose.

“Well?” the Duchess demanded, batting arthritic eyelashes. “Don’t you know to help a lady into her litter?”

“It would be my honor?” ventured Lieutenant Fluellen.