Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,90
fortunate for him, then, to have friends with the means to race yachts and travel anywhere at a moment’s notice,” Mama said.
Translation: Your Humphrey is merely a younger son, with no fortune or prospects to speak of.
“Mr. Morris exerts himself to be agreeable,” Hyacinth said. “I have never heard him utter a disparaging remark about any of his friends. I cannot wonder at their wishing for his company.”
There it was: Where Cassandra confronted, her sister disarmed.
But Cassandra wasn’t her sister and never would be, and to her the visit seemed to go on for weeks. Certainly it dragged on for longer than the usual quarter hour of a morning call. But none of Lord deGriffith’s womenfolk would allow themselves to appear in the least ruffled, and the Countess of Bartham was obliged to take her leave without having visibly raised any hackles, and not even sure who had won the verbal fencing match.
As she was preparing to depart, however, she drew Mama and Hyacinth aside to whisper something, and Mr. Owsley approached Cassandra.
His back blocking the others’ view, he placed a small folded note on the table nearby.
“I hope you will do me the kindness to read this in private,” he said in an undertone. “I give you my word of honor that it contains nothing any young gentlewoman would be ashamed to read.”
He moved away too quickly for her to respond, had she wanted to. But she simply sat, mask in place, refusing to react to anything.
She regarded the note beside her. She didn’t want to touch it. Then she reminded herself that he was nothing more than one annoying man among multitudes. She tucked the note into the pocket hanging inside her skirt.
“They know something I don’t,” Lady Bartham told Mr. Owsley as her carriage set out from St. James’s Square. “They wouldn’t take the news so calmly otherwise.”
They’d displayed not so much as a flicker of surprise. Lady deGriffith, in fact, had looked amused. As to Miss Pomfret, one might as well try to read a cobblestone.
“But Mr. Morris told you—”
“Yes, yes, but there must be more to this than meets the eye.”
“Do you believe it’s a . . . prank of some kind? But to what purpose?”
To make a game of me, Lady Bartham thought. Again.
She said, “When does the Duke of Ashmont need a purpose for his pranks? Something is amiss. How I wish I could be sure he leaves tonight! Until he’s gone from London, Miss Pomfret cannot be safe.”
Cassandra waited until she was with her sister in the sitting room they shared to tell her what Owsley had done.
“How curious,” Hyacinth said. “Do you think he’s drafting a new bill, and wants your approval?” She laughed.
“That I doubt very much.” Cassandra took out and unfolded the note.
Within a blank piece of paper was folded a page of the Court Journal dated the twenty-seventh of April of the present year. A poem addressed to “the Lady Charlotte ——” filled the front page. Somebody—Owsley, no doubt—had crossed out “Lady Charlotte ——” and written “Miss P——” next to it.
“A poem?” Hyacinth said.
Cassandra glanced over it, and paused at “I’d give thee Patience,—to endure the bleak and bitter day, / So dim to thee, so bright unto thy truant far away.”
Then she went back to the beginning and read the thing through, her sister at her shoulder.
When they’d finished, they looked at each other.
“Good heavens,” Hyacinth said. “Is this Mr. Owsley’s idea of a love note?”
“More like a prophecy of doom.” Cassandra read aloud:
“I’d give thee Patience,—to sustain the still more weary night
When round thee swell the harp-notes, and the lamps are blazing bright,
And to thy rival’s whisper’d words he bends with raptur’d ear,
Nor marks amid her showering smiles thy one lone silent tear!”
“I remember this,” Hyacinth said. “It appeared while the influenza was raging. Everybody wondered which Lady Charlotte was meant, and some argued that it was a pseudonym. As to the errant husband, we had no shortage of candidates.”
“That I don’t doubt,” Cassandra said. “But Owsley can mean nobody but Ashmont.”
Her sister read aloud:
“I’d give thee Patience,—to speak on, in gentleness and peace,
Though answer’d but with silent scorn that longs to bid thee cease;
Patience,—to check the rising flush,— the sob, —the choking sigh,—
Patience,—to live unmurmuring on, though it were bliss to die.
“I’d give thee Patience,—to receive within thy sacred door
One whom thou know’st as dear to-day, as thou thyself of yore;
One whom he bids thee smile to greet, and welcome as a guest,