“No. I was eager for explanations, for excuses, for anything. But along with his other faults, Beaumont is honest. He had told me he would leave his mistress, and apologized for what I’d seen—but then I asked him if he loved her. He hesitated for a moment and declined to answer, but it was too late. And he finally admitted the truth.”
“He loved his mistress? My mother said that men form those relationships in a purely practical fashion.”
“Your mother’s axioms should be taken with a grain of salt,” Jemma said. “Sarah was very beautiful. By the time we married, they’d been together, if you can use that term, for three years. He says she’s no longer his mistress now, but I don’t know how their relationship ended. I do know that he had an attachment to her that was far greater than his attachment to me, with our stilted intimacies and my foolish comments in bed.”
Poppy swallowed. “It sounds as if you and I are in similar marriages.”
“You saw Fletch flirting with someone,” Jemma corrected her. “Beaumont left my bed, after making love to me, and proceeded to his office, where he made love to Miss Cobbett. There is a world of difference there, Poppy.”
“Not really,” Poppy said. “You know there isn’t. If Louise hadn’t happened to be my friend, he’d be making love to her on a desk right now. Is that—is that a common place for such activities?” she burst out.
“No,” Jemma said. Then she grinned. “We shouldn’t be so gloom-filled, Poppy. Not that many marriages survive, for one reason or another. I waited in Paris for three years, thinking that Beaumont would bring me back, but he didn’t. And by the time he finally deigned to pay me a visit, I had discovered some pleasures of my own—if not on a table top.”
“I see,” Poppy said. “You’re suggesting that Fletch will wait three years before paying me another call?”
Jemma leaned over and gave her a squeeze, but said nothing.
“He isn’t going to come, is he?” It was a relief to say it out loud.
“I’m not sure how parallel our situations are,” Jemma said, “but my guess is that he’s rather surprised he hasn’t encountered you at a party.”
“He’s going to parties?” Poppy asked.
Jemma turned back the newspaper and pointed to a column entitled “Taradiddle about the Ton.” Just above Jemma’s pink-tipped finger was a sentence that made Poppy’s heart drop into her slippers.
The Duke of F—found himself at the du Maurier ball last night without his duchess. The tiddle is that the said duchess may have departed for Venice. The Duke appeared unmoved by the buzz of interest and spent most of the evening in colloquy with Pitt’s lords, who seemed overjoyed to welcome the sprig of fashion to their ranks.
“How Fletch must hate being called a sprig of fashion,” Poppy said. And: “I’m in Venice?”
“They always get those things wrong,” Jemma said. “If they’re not sure where you are, they make something up.”
“I should go to a meeting of Lady Cleland’s sewing circle,” Poppy said, after a bit.
“I wouldn’t,” Jemma said.
“Why not?”
“It sounds boring.”
“It’s our duty,” Poppy said. “Caring for the poor and succouring the afflicted.”
“I don’t do it well,” Jemma said. “I do give a great deal of money away. Beaumont’s money, but believe me, an impoverished person far prefers the solid clink of coin to a poorly stitched sheet, which is about all that I can sew.”
“I was wondering about money…What am I to do about money?”