Mariana frankly thought it would be rather fun to one day get well and truly foxed with Mrs. Pariseau.
“But Ithinkwhat His Grace is saying,” Mrs. Pariseau continued diplomatically, “is that you are making quite the Aristotelian argument. Aristotle maintained that virtues are really a sort of... oh, how did he put it, Your Grace?”
“A golden mean,” he said at once, because of course he knew everything. “Aristotle defines a virtue as the sort of perfect average between a vice of excess and a vice of deficiency. So itis, after a fashion, a study in contrasts.”
Mariana furrowed her brow. “IthinkI understand. What you’re saying is, for instance, that an excess ofself-righteousnesswould then be a vice? Because wouldn’t the—what was that again, Mrs. Pariseau?”
“The golden mean,” Mrs. Pariseau replied approvingly.
“—be humility? Or is that on the excess end of the scale, too?”
He studied her, lips slightly pressed together. She’d never known any man who could say so much without changing his expression.
She didn’t even precisely know what she wanted from him. Apart, perhaps, from being seen. This would likely be impossible. Her pride—which wasn’t a particularly useful quality at this point in her life—refused to attempt to ingratiate herself to him, and her instincts told her it was useless. He had sealed her into the little glass jar of his scathing indifference, and she could get no purchase on the slick, unyielding sides of it in order to escape.
She supposed she would at least like to punish him a little. To introduce a little discomfort and uncertainty into his world as revenge for introducing alotinto hers. If someone like him thought her only bulwarks against the world—beauty and charm and talent—were paltry and common and tedious, how was she to survive? She might as well go into battle naked.
Though she suspected she looked very well naked, truthfully. She hadn’t heard one complaint.
“Aristotle described the virtues as courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, ambition, patience, and friendliness.” The duke enunciated this emotionlessly and tersely and managed to make them sound like the names of soldiers he was ordering before a firing squad.
The net effect was that everyone present silently and somewhat uneasily reviewed their souls for these virtues, and decided they might be missing a few.
Mariana wasn’t certain she knew what “magnanimity” or “liberality” meant, but she wasn’t about to ask him.
“Magnificence,” regrettably, fitted him the way his beautifully tailored suits did.
“Then is chastity a virtue by that definition, or a vice?” she pressed. “Isn’t it an excess of chastitynotgetting enough—”
Mrs. Hardy cleared her throat noisily.
“And I suppose one can be an expert inonevirtue and a failure at another? For instance, excelling at magnificence and failing at friendliness? Or do they all necessarily come as a set, like chess pieces?”
She noted a flicker of irritation, and somehow this was absurdly satisfying as if she’d been trying for hours to strike a spark from a flint.
“And who gets to decide what the virtues are? Why should Aristotle get to decide?” Mr. Delacorte was skeptical. “Do we elect new virtues as one does an MP? And if not, why not? We ought to have a vote.”
“Oh, I do love to vote!” Dot enthused.
“Excellent point, Mr. Delacorte,” Mariana said stoutly. “Who decides?”
Delilah and Angelique exchanged glances. Rumblings of a rebellion were underway. Before they knew it, a guillotine would be erected for the epithet jar.
“For that matter, who decides what thevicesare?” Mariana pressed. One admonishing jar in the room was tyranny enough.
“I should think you would want to ease your way into the notion of virtue, Miss Wylde, as one does with new topics of study,” the duke said. “Aristotle has identified more than seven, and Thomas Aquinas identifies even more of them.”
“St. Thomas Aquinas!” Mrs. Pariseau clasped her hands in bliss. “Your Grace, oh, I do so appreciate alearnedman.”
Mrs. Pariseau liked to flirt, and that’s precisely what she was doing now, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t about to saddle herself with another husband, as the last one had left her reasonably financially comfortable.
“We haven’t yet played charades here in the sitting room,” said Mrs. Durand suddenly, thinking it might be time to change the topic. “Charades would be rather amusing to try one of these nights.”
“We pantomimed a pirate battle once, Valkirk.” Mr. Delacorte liked to catch new guests up on the history of the entertainments in the sitting room. “Bolt was once almost killed by pirates, and so we all pretended to be pirates, even Captain Hardy.”
“Was he, indeed?” the duke said idly. “It does seem like something you’d want to relive again and again.”
“He killed the pirate instead,” Delacorte reassured him.
