“I’m not talking about that! Anyone could have that happen—but she was alone when it happened.”
“I gather you’re criticizing my ability to hire nursemaids.”
“That governess was as feckless and beautiful as the rest of the women in this house,” she said flatly. “She had no real care for Eugenia: none.”
“She was in love. That could happen to anyone.” Though he was starting to wonder if it had really happened to Harriet.
“She was part and parcel with the women who pay you visits,” Harriet snapped. “My mother would have called her a wag-tail. She was nothing more than a ladybird, looking for her next meal!”
Jem could feel himself growing rigid. Ice poured down his back. “I regret that you think I willingly hired a ladybird to care for my daughter.”
“You didn’t hire her willingly,” Harriet cried. “I suspect you simply don’t know what a decent woman looks like.”
“I am not a hermit,” he pointed out, counting to one hundred in the back of his mind. “I frequently visit London, which is stiflingly full of boring woman who must, therefore, be virtuous.”
“Oh, of course virtue is boring!”
“Exactly. And it makes such claims for itself. The very smell of virtue makes a woman utterly tedious, and at the same time, utterly conceited.”
“I am a virtuous woman,” Harriet said through clenched teeth.
“We’ll have to agree that you are an exception,” Jem said. He was vibrating with rage over her criticism of his childrearing. “I shall do my best to engage a truly virtuous nanny for Eugenia. Or else I’ll just try to find one like yourself.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You came to my house under a false name, dressed in breeches,” he pointed out. “When it became clear to both of us that we were of compatible genders, you fell into bed with me without showing an undue amount of virtue. Thank God.”
“In short: you think I’m a strumpet.”
“Only in the best meaning of the term.”
“A ladybird.”
His back stiffened again and his jaw tightened. “There would be nothing so terrible about being a ladybird, Harriet.”
“So is that the future you have in mind for Eugenia? Is that why she is locked in the west wing, hardly able to enjoy fresh air—while all the ladybirds trot around your estate?”
“I have never kept Eugenia from the fresh air. Neither have I unreasonably immured her from our guests. She has come to know a few of the young women very well.”
Too late, he realized this was a mistake. Harriet’s eyes flashed and she made a sound that could have been a growl, on a man. “I gather it is your ambition to turn her to a ladybird, then, since you give her such excellent companionship.”
“Can you please find some other term for this conversation?”
“Doxy?” Her tone was delicate but sharp as knives. “Drab or strumpet? There are so many appropriate words.”
“And as a virtuous woman, you know them all,” he said, pushed beyond endurance. “Good women delight in throwing terms at those less fortunate—even while they gaily engage in precisely the same behavior.”
She paled and he knew that went home.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, a second later.
“You virtuous women shun and scorn those whom you believe to be weaker, less righteous. And yet—”
“You’re saying I’ve played the doxy in your house, and now I have no right to condemn you for your taste in companionship. After all, I transformed myself into precisely what you always desired.”