The second problem was her dratted curiosity. In order to maintain her reputation and have even the slightest chance of making a respectable marriage, she needed to appear innocent as a newborn lamb.
And in some ways, Lucy Ninepence was innocent. She’d never so much as touched the ungloved hand of a gentleman not related to her by marriage. Oh, but she had studied. Every unlocked library in Manchester had attracted her attention, especially the collections in tantalizing nooks. She’d done yeoman’s work as an espionage agent tasked by her own hungry mind with finding caches of pornography and devouring their contents before she was missed from a party.
Obviously, these London sophisticates couldn’t know that.
“Feminine…essence?” she asked, her eyes wide.
Lady Maria sneered. “You know, from your mantrap,” she hissed. “If you’d been raised with a proper nanny, you’d know all about such magic. She’d have told you stories of the occult. Feminine power that brings a man to his knees.”
Lucy looked at the quizzing glass. She’d read about lewd acts in those forbidden books. But she’d always imagined sharing intimacies with someone who cared for her. Not performing for cruel girls who’d never accept her anyway.
Honestly, Lucy wasn’t even sure she wanted a husband from this glittering, cold world. But she wanted to belong somewhere. To someone. For too long she’d been the only child of an industrialist who constantly lived in fear of his employees. The gates between her and the outside hadn’t merely been figurative.
“I can assure you I’m as pure as any of the debutantes,” said Lucy, her eyes downcast and mind calculating how to get out of this mess.
Lady Maria snorted. Really, she was a nasty bit of business, and Lucy wasn’t so new to this earth that she could gather from this interaction any offer of genuine friendship. It was a false overture and seemed to have all the makings of a trick.
“I am! And I don’t think this is a very nice game,” said Lucy. “I forfeit.”
Lady Maria didn’t respond. She merely left the room at high sail, no doubt off to tell her confederates that their plan had been thwarted.
Lucy looked about the empty room and realized that this was as good a time as any to avail herself of the chamber pot.
Only when Lucy had concluded her ablutions and rounded the corner of the privacy screen did she realize something was wrong. There were hisses and a crowd of ladies at the door to the retiring room. Most glared at her in horror, and a few merely looked sad.
The Duke of Cockesbrayne was at the center of the crush. He stood on the threshold as if repelled by propriety, but final as the Gates of Thermopylae. She would need to pass him to exit the room, but attempting to do so might cause her death, if his expression was any indication. The room suddenly felt airless, too hot, the walls closing in.
“My quizzing glass…” he said, his hand extended as if to pull it from Lucy’s hand through the air between them.
Lady Maria, just to the duke’s right, wiped beautiful false tears into a fine handkerchief. “That’s not all, Your Grace. I saw her — with my ownpureeyes — doing the mostunnaturalthings with it.Under her skirts.”
Towards the back of the crush, Lucy heard the voice of her paid chaperone. Mrs. Easterling, well aware that her lucrative business was being leveled faster than London in 1666, swooned. But not before crying out, “Oh dear! Thetonwasn’t supposed to discover the duke’s attachment to Lucy in this manner!”
The assemblage gasped and then buzzed, each person seeking confirmation of this most shocking bit of news. It almostseemed as if the Duke of Cockesbrayne and new money Lucy Ninepence…had an agreement?
It was under those circumstances and the eyes of a scandalized, watchful group of ladies that Lucy met the duke’s eyes for the first time.
They were hard and angry. Beneath that, there was something else: humiliation, as if he found himself suddenly exposed.
And in a way, he was exposed; there was no quizzing glass before his eye because it was in her hand.
And thus was Lucy Ninepence spectacularly ruined.
Chapter 2
Peter slapped his glovesagainst his trousers for what must have been the fifth time that morning. He was absolutely furious — and felt hopelessly stupid.
His valet had already laid out three different waistcoats before Peter had snapped at him to just choose one. And now here he was, in his carriage, headed to Curzon Street to propose marriage to a woman whose name sounded like a bad joke.
He couldn’t even bring his quizzing glass for moral support. The traitorous thing remained on his dresser where he’d flung it last night. Miss Ninepence had shoved it into his hand afore running off — as if he wanted it returned! His quizzing glass wasruined!
That little northern chit and her chaperone had done what so many before had tried and failed to do: they’d trapped Peter Sidwin into marriage.
Peter knew he could simply refuse. It would be a scandal, to be sure, yet dukes had the power to sustain such a blow. But he had been raised by a woman who had prayed for a child for decades and who had finally conceived at an age when most women were grandmothers. She taught him that his privilege afforded him an immense responsibility. That a gentleman’s honor was worth more than any title. He, a duke, might survive refusing the marriage, but the young lady could not.
At breakfast this morning, he’d tried three times to apprise his mother of the situation, but she’d only complained louder about the state of her lumbago.
And if Mama had given him a chance to explain, what could he have said?I’ve been steered and sheared more effectively than any of the sheep on cousin Timothy’s cursed estates.She would likely droop in her chair and require a doctor, which would have delayed this dreaded but necessary trip to Curzon Street to ask — resentfully — for his supposed paramour’s hand in marriage.
