A very bad mistake, indeed.
Perhaps one of Galworthy’s servants had submitted the gossip item for money. Perhaps the daughter herself had done it, hoping to hasten an attachment along, or because she craved attention, or thought the attention would bring a better match if the duke decided she was not for him.
The risk was that it exposed Galworthy’s daughter to the scrutiny oftongossips, and the duke to embarrassment or accusations of faithlessness when he’d made no such promise and had no such intentions, certainly not now. He did not think a few lines of printed gossip could ever embarrass him. But they could and did appall him. A little gossip about him merely wedged the way open for more of it; and more of it would collect like barnacles on the hull of his legacy. He had fought for what he had now—the influence, the wealth, the reach, the inviolable reputation—and it belonged not only to him. It belonged to his son and to his descendants.
And he, like his son said, belonged to the whole country.
He would be damned if anyone would so cheaply and willfully tarnish who he was.
He could not be embarrassed into marrying a girl. But the gossipcouldpotentially embarrass his son and his new young wife. And while his son ought to have thicker skin, James didn’t care. He would do anything to protect him, regardless.
He understood something now, with a resignation that made him weak and wondering. He frankly wanted to call out whoever had put thatexpression on Mariana’s face—that pale emptiness, as though she was bleeding from the inside—and meet them on a field of combat, and mow them down.
But he supposed he’d be calling out himself, too. He was as much the culprit.
In his frustration, the pendulum of his thoughts swung violently and furiously in the opposite direction:She’s just an opera singer. I am a duke. How dare she make me suffer? How dare she make me wait? I could have any woman in my bed, if I chose. I could marry any beautiful girl in England.
He knew the truth of it: if their roles were reversed, he would not have been able to stay away from her for two days.
And this meant she, incomprehensibly, was stronger than he was.
What little alliteration would they choose to use if somehow their affair was discovered? “Hero in harlot’s bed.” “Valkirk sinks his dirk in disgraced diva.” The Rowlandson illustrations would be merciless and lurid; he could imagine them for sale at Ackermann’s, with part of the populace laughing and pointing, and others crushingly disappointed and confused. There would be broadsides. Mocking pub songs. And that would be part of his legacy, too. In fact, he imagined that every part of his legacy, every assumption about who he was as a man, would be pored over and questioned, because of a woman who thought he was amusing. Whose face went soft and lit like a lamp every time she saw him. Who, when she openedher arms to him, made him feel as though he was coming home.
A girl who’d taken other lovers, kissed other men, made love with astonishing skill and sensual abandon, enjoyed champagne a little too much, hadn’t quite hated her visit to a gaming hell, and who was trying to claim greatness of her own. She thought it would be safer at the top.
They could not be discovered. For his sake, and for hers.
So perhaps this gossip item was a mercy. A splash of water one threw over rutting dogs to get them to stop.
Mainly the little gossip item exposed another reality they both must face, however: there would come a day when he would make another match. He saw this as an inevitability.
And there would come a day, very soon, when Mariana was gone.
He wasn’t certain how to fix this for her, or if he should. He supposed the two of them would have preferred not to face anything like reality until she’d left for Paris.
Because, as she’d said before, some people preferred their dreams to their waking life.
She’d been right about something else, too. That understanding could be found in contrasts.
As he lay there in that empty room, he had a much better understanding of loneliness, because with her he had, for perhaps the first time ever, been so blessedly, blissfully not alone.
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well. I hope you have not been worried about me. I think you’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve decided to join a convent. It’s the best place for someone like me, and I think I can put my singing skills to good use there.
At least this was a letter her mother might not be appalled to receive. After all, her mother had always thought she was destined for great things.
She didn’t write it, of course. She still hadn’t written, let alone sent, anything after those first few words she’d written the day after she’d arrived.
Mariana had begun to believe she might make a fine nun.
Would a convent have her? They did do a lot of singing in convents, did they not?
And... spent a lot of time on their knees?
This was apparently who she was: a woman who made jokes to herself featuring fellatio and nuns, in order to make herself feel better about adopting that position in the duke’s bedroom after dark.
She’d adopted a lot of other positions there, too, granted.
