Isidore was silent. Harriet hardly took a breath, so fascinated was she by the charged sexuality that flared between them.
“I have never considered myself in need of a prince,” Isidore said, finally.
“I shall have to…persuade you of your need,” the duke said. And he smiled. He was by no means classically handsome, in an English sort of way. He had a big nose, and all that tumbling black hair, and that golden-dark skin. But Harriet realized her mouth had fallen open anyway.
“A wedding,” the duke said. “The kind of wedding celebrated in Gondar, from which I just returned. My mother is preparing the estate and invitations will be delivered all over England. We may have to send a special invitation to Mr. Cope, of course. For some reason I think my mother may not know his name.” His eyes slid to Harriet, and she realized with a start that she was simply standing there like a dunce.
“I would be honored,” she said weakly.
“You’ll forgive me for not taking your arm? Under the circumstances?” There was a devil laughing in those eyes.
Harriet fell back and bowed, and Cosway swept Isidore through the door into the drawing room. There was a moment of dead silence and then a clatter of tongues that she heard straight into the antechamber.
Chapter Thirty-one
In Which Lord Strange’s Reputation Takes a Strange Turn
February 20, 1784
T he next night it started all over again—a table of half-drunk Oxford professors together with some odd and highly intelligent actors, Lord Pensickle and Mr. Nashe. Villiers came to dinner and stayed for port. Everyone talked of little other than the Duke of Cosway’s return, and the way he swept his duchess away to London after one evening at Fonthill.
“I suddenly realized something,” Harriet said to Jem. He was sprawled next to her in a chair. Now they had a routine. Once the ladies left he moved down the table and sat beside her without a word. It allowed him to do naughty things with his hands.
They felt happy sitting together. They never said it, but silence didn’t make it any the less true.
“What?” he asked lazily. He was watching Mr. Nashe play chess with Lord Pensickle. Pensickle was a little the worse for port, and kept picking up the wrong pieces and galloping them across the board.
“The only dissolute persons in your house are women.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Jem said. “Look at Villiers, for instance.”
“No, I mean it,” Harriet said. She looked around the room. There were perhaps twenty men around the table. Down to the left, two of the Oxford professors were chattering about a recent visit to the Duchess of Portland’s collection at Bulstrode Park. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, was talking about something called a Banks Florilegium—and the need to raise funds for the project. His audience looked unconvinced. Nashe and Pensickle were playing chess.
Sullenly congregating in the drawing room (the ladies had made it clear that they did not approve of the new custom of separate evenings), were the Graces, Sophia Grafton and the rest.
“Your house gains its reputation from the women you invite.”
“That is true of any house,” Jem said, with a flash of anger in his eyes. “It’s one of life’s great unfairnesses. Mr. Avery, for example, maintains Mrs. Mahon in royal style. She’s doubtless out in the drawing room right now boasting about the little silver boxes he’s bought her. But is his reputation any the worse for it? No.”
“It’s grotesquely unfair.”
“The world is unfair,” Jem said. “Reputation is ephemeral and unfair. Why should the Duchess of Beaumont be famed for her liaisons and yet Mrs. Mahon be an outcast?”
“Jemma married before she had an affaire,” Harriet said, jumping to the defense of her childhood friend. “And then she didn’t stray until she found her husband on the desk with his mistress.”
“A bitter moment, I expect,” Jem said.
“Very!” Harriet said. “Did you maintain a mistress while married to Sally?”
“No. Sally was enough to keep me busy.”
Harriet spared a moment for a pulse of dislike for tall, slim, busy Sally.
“What are you two talking about?” Lord Pensickle said, raising his head from the chess board.
“Checkmate,” his opponent said.
Pensickle gave a little snort of disapproval and pushed away the board. “Every time I look across the table, you have your heads together.”
Harriet gave him a cool look. “We were actually discussing mistresses.”
“Don’t tell me you have one!” Pensickle said, with a guffaw. “I wouldn’t have thought your instrument was old enough to function.”
Harriet stiffened.
But before she could answer, Villiers cut in. “Now that is surely a matter of the pot calling the kettle black, Pensickle. According to the laments so widely distributed by your former mistress, you have some…difficulty there yourself. All due to age, no doubt!”
“I must say,” Jem said, “I found the poem published in Gentleman’s Magazine rather amusing myself. Though undoubtedly it had nothing to do with you, Pensickle. You have to admit, all those jokes about the pen that would cast no ink were clever.”
Pensickle’s eyes narrowed. “My pen has more than enough ink,” he flashed. “And at least I’m dippin’ in the right kind of inkwell, if you don’t mind the presumption, Strange.”
For a moment Harriet thought that Jem would leap across the table. There was a sudden calmness around his large body, but he just grinned.
“Villiers and I are educating Harry about the responsibilities of manhood, including lessons in proper treatment of the fair sex. Perhaps we’ll take you on next, though I doubt things would go as well. Harry, after all, has found himself in the favor of one of the Graces.”
That was true enough. Kitty was so saddened by the terrible accident that had befallen her darling Mr. Cope that she sought Harriet out at every possibility, hanging on her elbow and smiling sadly at her.
“It ain’t Harry’s inclinations that I’d question,” Pensickle said, pushing back from the table. “I think I’ll be going in the morning, Strange. I don’t mind the house being a little strange, but we all have our limits.”
“By all means,” Jem said, smiling at him. “Why don’t I ask my butler to help you now? No need to wait until morning. Just think. You might get lured into another game of chess and lose, or worse—one of the young ladies in the other room might request the use of your pen.”
Pensickle knocked over a chair on his way out the door.
Harriet felt a little sick. The table had gone stone silent, naturally, but now eased back into talk as if nothing had happened. She felt the nearness of Jem’s leg, even though he had turned away and was chatting with the man on his right.
She turned to her left. Frederick Sanders gave her a queasy little smile and his eyes skittered away from hers. He was a middle-aged man with a cheerful red face and a parcel of coal mines, here to ask Jem to invest in coal.
As a matter of fact, Harriet had talked Jem out of the investment, based on the fact that the mines were dangerous for workers, but Sanders didn’t know that. He’d been perfectly friendly to her up to this moment.