“Who decides what those rules are?”
“Society as a whole in a given era dictates the mores of that era.”
“And then they write about it in the newspaper, I suppose.”
“So it would seem,” he said idly, and returned to his reading.
Her temper began to simmer.
“Will you be addressingallof the virtues in a series of books, then? Is that the book you’re writing now?”
“Why? Have you need of a review of them, Miss Wylde?” he said mildly. “Or perhaps an introduction?”
“I know there are seven. I also can tell you firsthand their application seems rather flexible among the aristocracy.”
“I’m certain you can,” he said with a sort of hateful detachment.
“But it seems to me, Your Grace,” she pressed, “that an intimate knowledge of all the vices would be necessary in order to convincingly write about virtues. Such ashonor, for instance.”
He lowered the newspaper, and his dark eyes appeared again.
That momentary flicker in them made her wonder if she was about to be challenged to a duel.
“How do you mean, Miss Wylde?” Mrs. Pariseau piped up.
“How does one describe the day without knowledge of the night? How does one describe honor without a knowledge of dishonor?”
She had his attention. Which was a bit like holding a hot horseshoe freshly forged on an anvil.
“And for that matter, how does one describe, oh, chastity, perhaps, without an intimate knowledge of lust?”
That screen of cynicism moved across his face again, and he eyed her the way he might an ensign he was about to order flogged.
She’d just put the duke in the position of declaiming about chastity and lust. She had no idea if either was considered an official virtue or vice, but she was pretty sure they were considered opposites, and one was considered a sin. She’d done a good deal of soul-searching about both.
She’d take making him uncomfortable as a win.
“May I refer you to prudence and temperance, Miss Wylde, then, if you’re looking for an introduction to virtues,” he said politely. “Although the expression ‘closing the stable door after the horse has bolted’ comes to mind, for some reason.” The last words drifted, and with the tiniest of self-amused smiles, as he returned his attention to the newspaper again.
She was grateful she didn’t have a knitting needle to hand, because she had a fleeting fantasy of hurling one, javelin style, into his forehead.
Dot, listening closely, was puzzled. “Wait.Ischastity avirtue, or just something you call it when you don’t—”
“It’s a virtue, a fine one,” Mrs. Hardy assured her hastily. For the time being, she thought it was probably best not to encourage Dot to entertain complex notions about the permeability between vices and virtues, because she might explain them to the maids. It would lead to more dropped tea trays. Or pregnant maids.
“Your Grace, I apologize for pressing the point”—Mariana of course wasn’t at all sorry—“but have you, then, some experience of dishonor?”
“Given your fascination with contrasts, it sounds to me as though you’re a scholar of Aristotle’s writings on the virtues then, Miss Wylde,” the duke said.
She went silent and fixed him with a cool stare. Because she didn’t quite know who Aristotle was, and she was an actual scholar of nothing apart from how to survive.
He didn’t blink, and neither did she, and this wasn’t easy. Something perverse in her was determined to meet his eyes again and again until she didn’t feel a thing. Certainly not the jolt she felt now, from her forehead to her toes.
“Oh, my mate Aristotle and I regularly have a pint or two together at the pub,” she said finally.
Mr. Delacorte, bless him, chuckled behind her.
“Having only a drink or two with a mate would be the virtue of temperance, Miss Wylde, and having six or seven and getting well and truly foxed would be a vice,” Mrs. Pariseau chimed in. “I know which side I land on.”
