Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,30
eventually, but as Uncle Fred had said, it would seem like idle gossip—and stale at that. Not likely to cause a sensation.
All Ashmont had done to protect her reputation would go for nothing if he sought her out now. Not that he’d be able to get near her, in any event. The King had banned him from Court. Almack’s patronesses had banned him from the weekly assemblies. All but a very few daring hostesses had crossed him off their invitation lists.
But she . . . she’d written to him, of her own free will. That boded a softening, didn’t it? She’d given him a point!
Yes, possibly, but if he rushed his fences, he might find himself back in her bad graces.
Stay away, he told himself. And he remained firm in this wise resolution until after he bathed, shaved, dressed, and sat down to breakfast. That was when he read Foxe’s Morning Spectacle.
Humphrey Morris arrived at Ashmont House early on Wednesday evening, while Ashmont was in his dressing room. This was built on the ducal scale, and the portion devoted to dressing was only one part. A large part, true, for it is a duke’s duty to keep as many people employed as possible, and as regards tailors, haberdashers, hatters, bootmakers, and the like, His Grace of Ashmont did his duty.
The space held, as it ought to do, a handsome dressing table. Since the duke used it as a writing desk, drinks tray, and general depository, it usually looked as though the Goths and Vandals had paid a visit. It was his valet’s despair.
The dressing room also contained a small table and three comfortable chairs. These stood near the fireplace. Along a wall a sofa reposed. Several shelves held books and magazines. Other shelves as well as the walls displayed a collection of erotic art of remarkable variety and a changing series of satirical prints, many featuring the duke.
Although Ashmont House boasted a fine study, its master tended to loiter in the dressing room, much to Sommers’s dismay. At present the servant moved among the drawers and cupboards of the adjoining light closet, engaged in the exacting process of assembling his employer’s attire for the evening.
His Grace, in his dressing gown, sat at the small table, nursing a glass of wine and brooding over a lengthy entry in Foxe’s Morning Spectacle. He waved Morris to the chair opposite.
Morris sat and said nothing.
“Carlotta O’Neill’s,” Ashmont said. “Tonight. After the play. She’s promised dancing girls. Naked ones. Or was it rope dancers? One or the other. But naked.”
Carlotta was the most popular courtesan in London, for more than the usual reasons. Her entertainments were famously bawdy or comical or exciting or all three. Ashmont was looking forward to this evening. One could count on naked dancers to wipe one’s mind clean, at least temporarily, of everything else—such as the three columns in Foxe’s Morning Spectacle and, in particular, a handful of words therein.
He became aware of the peculiar sound of his visitor saying nothing. Silence? Morris?
“Naked dancers,” Ashmont said. “Are you ill?”
Morris sighed.
“Take some wine.” Ashmont poured. “You’ve lost your rosy glow. Got into the moneylenders’ hands?”
Morris shook his head. “No, no, nothing so simple. Only . . .” He frowned down at the paper. “You saw?”
“Saw what?”
“There.” Morris jabbed his index finger at the relevant column. “The fancy fair thing.”
“Grand Fancy Fair? Hanover Square Rooms?”
“Yes. You saw?”
“Hard to miss. A lot of aristocratic ladies playing shopkeepers, selling their bits and bobs of handiwork. Queen promised to attend. Yes, that’ll draw a mob, in a stuffy hall in midsummer London.” Ashmont feigned a yawn. “No wonder you’re wan and sickly. Saps a fellow’s vital energy, merely picturing it. Now, if the ladies planned to have a wrestling match in a mud pit, that would be worth seeing.”
“Are you blind? She’ll be there.” Morris took the paper and gently, reverently traced with his finger a place halfway down the second column. “Miss Hyacinth.”
“Who?”
“Miss Hyacinth Pomfret,” Morris said tenderly. “She’ll be there.”
“Ah, yes. Ladies of Lord Chelsfield’s family. Stall Nine on Thursday.” The temptation was powerful: public gathering, Miss Pomfret in a stall she couldn’t easily get out of . . . if she was there. She mightn’t be there. The paper was unusually vague in this case. Dozens of women qualified as “ladies of Lord Chelsfield’s family”: aunts, in-laws, cousins.
All the same, his mind had gone to work imagining the possibilities. It couldn’t help itself.