Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,81

of Lady Charles Ancaster, whom all of Society rejoice to welcome back to London. The renowned beauty Miss Hyacinth Pomfret was present on these occasions.

—On Sunday, Mr. Titus Owsley, a sponsor of the controversial Sabbath bill, was thrown from his horse in Hyde Park, the result of a broken saddle girth. Though he suffered several contusions and a possible concussion, we are happy to state that great hopes are entertained of his recovery. In consequence of the accident, a dangerous tumult ensued in the crowded bridle path. This was swiftly subdued, and further calamities averted, we are told, by the timely actions of the Duke of Ashmont, Miss Pomfret, and Lady Charles Ancaster.

—Foxe’s Morning Spectacle Tuesday 9 July 1833

Tuesday morning

Mr. Owsley had bungled. It was the galling truth. For reasons he could not ascertain, his brain grew clumsy when he was in Miss Pomfret’s vicinity. But then, whenever he was in her vicinity lately, the Duke of Ashmont was as well, with all his ducal superiority, waving Owsley away as though he were a fly.

This was twice he’d tried to get her attention and made a spectacle of himself.

And a wreck, this time.

He lay on a chaise longue in the parlor of his rooms at the Albany.

Beside him stood a small table bearing some investigative reports, his Book of Common Prayer, and the hand mirror with which he’d been torturing himself since Sunday. He threw aside the Tuesday edition of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle and took up the mirror.

Every bone and muscle ached, but at least they didn’t show. His face looked as though a carriage had run over it. Jaw swollen near right ear. Patches of disgusting blue-green-yellow-black disfiguring his smooth features. Scrapes and scabs.

At least his nose wasn’t broken, no thanks to the vicious mare. Not that one could blame her for objecting to the Duke of Ashmont. All the same, the bad-tempered beast had come within a hairsbreadth of breaking her owner’s neck. If he failed to sell her in the course of the week, she’d go straight to the knackers.

Owsley set down the mirror and reached for the stack of reports. He read six pages of one, then threw it down.

The factory matter was complex, as he’d said. Doctors did not agree with one another about the children’s health. Being dirty, ragged, and ignorant did not make the little ones virtuous. Children lied. Call them up before a commission of enquiry and they swelled with self-importance and made themselves out to be more pitiful than they were. Ought they to be idle, then? Ought they be let to play all the day long? What would their families gain by that? What would the children learn from that? To beget more idle children, and more poor for the parish to support?

That’s what he should have said.

It would have made no difference. Nothing he said would have made a difference while the Duke of Ashmont loomed nearby.

Mr. Owsley took up the poem Lady Bartham had given him.

I’d give thee patience,—to endure the bleak and bitter day,

So dim to thee, so bright unto thy truant far away;

Patience,—the long dark dreary hours of absence to beguile

That thou may’st dry thy tears at last, and meet him with a smile.

It was so clear to him that this was what Miss Pomfret’s future held. An intelligent lady, who’d lived abroad—why couldn’t she see?

How could she see, with that great, hulking duke in the way?

But how was Owsley to get him out of the way?

Chapter 13

On Tuesday, Ashmont escorted the ladies to the Cosmorama in Regent Street. To nobody’s astonishment, Morris Tertius turned up.

The Cosmorama, which provided what some called a glorified peepshow, was a regular resort for London’s idle classes. Its viewing room offered a Gallery of Europe on one wall and a Gallery of Asia and Africa on the other, with seven scenes in each gallery. The scenes changed every month or so.

The other attractions included a refreshment room where cakes and ices were served and flirtations carried on, and a space for concerts and other performances.

The views were the main attraction, though. One moved from window to window to look through the magnifying lenses at the paintings. These were cleverly lit and arranged in a way that made them seem three-dimensional and, some of them, in motion. Two persons could peer through a window at the same time, if they stood quite close.

With Lady Charles nearby, that was a ticklish maneuver. But she hadn’t been here in years, and the images