Not to mention what his manly urges were urging down below.
Her cool voice penetrated the mental muddle. “He sounds like a good man.”
“A very good man. I usually do as he tells me, but tonight I was blue-deviled. There, up on the wall. Cruikshank. How well he captures these states.”
On the wall hung a series of works by the well-known illustrator: The Blue Devils, The Headache, Indigestion, and Jealousy.
They always seemed like perfect company to him when the moods struck—although jealousy had been an unknown state until he’d set his sights on her.
In The Blue Devils, a disconsolate fellow in his dressing gown sat with his feet on the fender while a host of tiny beings tormented him. One tempted him with a noose. Another offered a razor. Along the floor a funeral procession marched. Behind him on a shelf, a book of domestic medicine lay beneath a copy of The Miseries of Human Life. Upon this book stood an artist painting a scene of conflagration. On one side of the fire painting was a shipwreck. The work was hilariously accurate.
Her gaze traveled beyond the Cruikshank set. “I see you have an interesting collection of erotic prints. Before I took the wrapper from the painting of Keeffe and Amphion, I suspected it was in that category.”
“The thought crossed my mind.” While they talked, he’d finally arranged the allegedly simple waterfall correctly, more or less.
“That’ll do,” he said. “With any luck, nobody will get a close look at you. Now, all we have to do is get you home with nobody the wiser.”
She stepped back and walked to the horse dressing glass and studied herself. “I’d assumed I could simply deliver the message as a young gentleman, then return via hackney, as I came. But the business became more complicated than anticipated, and then I planned only how to get into your house, not how to get out again.” She brushed a piece of fluff from her coat sleeve.
They’d be wed. Soon. Otherwise they were sure to get into serious trouble. She was as daring and single-minded as he was, although she had, for the most part, employed these qualities in more productive ways than he had done.
“We need a confederate,” he said. “Blackwood is still at Camberley Place. Ripley is busy rearranging his life. We’ll have to bring Sommers into our confidence. He may be highly strung, but he’s loyal and discreet.”
Meanwhile
Mr. Owsley had taken Lady Bartham’s hint. He, too, couldn’t rest easy until he was sure the Duke of Ashmont was gone from London.
The man couldn’t be trusted. His and the rest of Their Dis-Graces’ pranks were notorious: a dinner at which men with speech impediments were required to recite poetry, another for which the dukes had replaced the mirrors with distorting ones.
They’d arranged for cartloads of rotting fish to be delivered to one victim. Other targets had found hordes of people at their doors, answering ads the dukes had placed: for brides, fiddle players, trained monkeys, dancing dogs, musical donkeys, and assorted other trained pets. They’d used a sling to hoist a goat into Almack’s during a Wednesday night assembly. They’d brought a bull into a china shop, to test the old adage, they claimed.
That was only a fraction of their so-called larks.
From what Owsley had heard, the most puerile of these alleged jokes were Ashmont’s work. As Lady Bartham had said, this supposed departure might easily be part of another prank.
This was what brought Mr. Owsley to the environs of Ashmont House. He was determined to find out what the accurst duke was about.
He was not in the least ashamed of spying on the Duke of Ashmont. On the contrary, Mr. Owsley deemed it his duty to do so, for Miss Pomfret’s sake.
He loitered as close to the house as he could, dawdling in Park Street, wandering into the mews opposite the gardens of Ashmont House, and lingering in the shadows near the stable yard. From time to time, when well concealed by darkness, he took out his spyglass for a closer look at the house. Some of the windows were lit, and once or twice he saw a figure pass in those overlooking the garden.
Upon returning to the stable yard area, he had confirmation of a sort. Some stablemen were talking about Surrey and readying the traveling chariot. Very well. While the duke wasn’t headed for Southampton and Goodwood thereafter, he was going away. Good news and good riddance.
Mr. Owsley was preparing to give up his