“I plan to wear a bow and quiver of arrows,” Annis said. “I’m not certain I won’t be called upon to put an arrow in someone who deserves it.”
“And you, Minnie?”
“Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom. I shall carry a spear and myaegiswith the head of Medusa.”
“Then whom does that leave for me?” Lucasta wanted to be Athena, with her breastplate and spear, but she understood this was punishment for her absence.
“Hera,” Annis announced. “Chief among goddesses, Queen of Heaven. Selina is going to fashion you a crown.”
“Hera! The jealous wife who is always turning people into things?”
“Protector of women and of marriage,” Minnie said. “It’s Homer who makes her a nasty little termagant. She was revered in the Archaic period. Hera was ruler of the heavens first, remember. Zeus gained his throne when he married her.”
The thought occurred to all four of them at the same time.
“If Trevor hasn’t declared himself yet, he will when he sees you as Hera,” Selina whispered. “He’ll be reminded of all he stands to gain.”
“Which might be very little, in the end,” Lucasta pointed out. “Aunt Cornelia might live a score more years, which I sincerelyhope she does. My grandmother the Dowager Viscountess might yet succeed in persuading her to confer everything on my cousin the current Viscount Frotheringale, which I believe is the sole aim of her existence. Aunt Cornelia might leave everything in an endowment for Miss Gregoire’s, or for that secret society she’s in, the Daughters of Minerva or some such. There’s no point in wedding me for a fancied inheritance that might never come to be.”
“He might simply like you for yourself, Lucasta,” Selina suggested.
“Piffle,” Lucasta replied. “I sincerely doubt he feels we’ll suit any better than I do. I only plan to marry—ifI marry, it will be for esteem. Someone like—well, never mind.”
Her thoughts went at once to Jem. In the usual way of things, a gentleman kissing a genteel young lady led to a declaration and then an offer. He had kissed her in secret, true, with none the wiser. They had not discussed the impropriety—could not, with Bertie there.
And she did not want a declaration, did she? A draper, a tradesman from London did not fit in Lucasta’s plans to open a music studio in Bath. A marquess’s grandson and a vicar’s orphan—that was the difference between heaven and earth, to be laughed out of thought.
He had told her why he played the Smart Jeremy. The role he assumed to gain custom. It made sense; the calculation did not offend her, not to someone who also made her own way, or tried to.
He had not, in the days since their time in his shop together, looked around the room after talking with her at a party as if he were taking the measure of who watched them. He had seemed completely absorbed in Lucasta.
And that kiss. Such a kiss gave a girl ideas. Unexpected, sleep-stealing, outrageous ideas.
Annis coiled her long form into an upholstered chair and glanced at Minnie. “It’s time we told her.”
“Oh, I’m sure it cannot be true,” Selina protested.
“My source is not the most trustworthy,” Minnie said.
“And it’s just a malicious piece of gossip, after all,” Selina added.
Lucasta scanned their concerned faces. “If it’s malicious, you ought to tell me.”
The others looked at Minnie, who straightened in her chair and looked Lucasta in the eye. “Ashley told me that Rudyard took up with you to make you the center of attention. In revenge for your epigram about his cravat.”
Lucasta’s stomach sank. “Lord Ashley said that?” Her mouth filled with sand at the words. Ashley was one of Rudyard’s closest friends.
The man she knew could not be so petty.
Not Jem. But Smart Jeremy, the persona he’d fashioned as his shield and spear to carry him through the fashionable world—who knew what defenses he needed to keep his place on ground so hard-won, so tenuous to hold?
Annis released the rest of it in a rush. “Ashley said Rudyard only took note of you because Clara Bellwether said that Lady Evers means to make you her heir. He knew you would gain notice, with that gossip circulating. He meant to bring you to attention. And—” Here her friend hesitated. “Something Rudyard said led Ashley to believe he intended for you to be ridiculed.”
Lucasta stared at the row of delicate porcelain vases lining the mantel above the fire, her face frozen. So now she knew. Rudyard—Smart Jeremy—had looked first at her because of spleen over her spiteful remark. But he had looked again—and pursued her—only because of that cursed gossip about her cursed supposed inheritance. Not for herself alone.
But to make a mockery of her.
“Why would Lord Ashley tell us this now?” she managed.
