He could be a rake if he doesn’t understand that it doesn’t take much to make a lady cry.
MISS HONORA TRUTH’S WORDS OF WISDOM AND WARNING ABOUT RAKES, SCOUNDRELS, ROGUES, AND LIBERTINES
Though it was unnatural for her, Marlena was nervous.
For more than one reason. First, there was the duke. He’d consumed her thoughts. Marlena hadn’t been able to get him off her mind since, in a moment of disquiet at the prospect of such a forbidden act as a kiss, she’d thrust his handkerchief between the two of them to avoid it when she’d very much wanted the kiss.
She kept asking herself why she hadn’t let their lips touch when she had been so eager to do exactly that. She’d thought about kisses before. With gentlemen who had no defined features. Now she had a face in her thoughts and fanciful notions. It was the duke’s roguishly handsome features that confronted her, and they wouldn’t leave her alone and give her peace.
Surely it wouldn’t have been so horrible to have allowed one little buss. If she had, the mystery of it would be solved. End of the story the way it was when she’d been in the woods with her cousins and they looked under a dead tree branch to see what insects were crawling around beneath it or when she’s explored the attic of Mr. Olingworth’s house. Surely there was nothing wrong in simply satisfying one’s curiosity about something that was unknown. She’d know how it felt to have a man’s lips pressed against hers. She kept asking herself why she hadn’t let the kiss happen. Why had she placed the handkerchief between them?
And then there was the other reason Marlena was nervous today. Miss Honora Truth. Her latest scandal sheet had come out earlier today. The first since the duke became her guardian. Eugenia was on her way to buy one at the bookshop she and Marlena frequented, and to casually ask how Words of Wisdom and Warning was selling.
Or if it is selling.
Marlena was waiting for Eugenia to return by using one of Justine’s annoying habits. Pacing in front of the fireplace and occasionally mumbling to herself.
When Marlena, Eugenia, and Veronica had first started this venture into the gossip writing world, they’d decided that Marlena must never be seen buying a copy of the scandal sheet, in the hope she could never be connected to it. And Eugenia seldom purchased one, but Marlena wanted to see this one in print.
She hadn’t been this worried since the third or fourth one hit the streets. The one where she’d mentioned the rumor Mr. Bramwell had started at White’s. That’s when the sales of the sheet seemed to take off.
After the duke had left her house a couple of days ago, she knew exactly what she had to write. Once that decision was made it wasn’t difficult to finish. The strange thing was that she’d never written about herself. She would be seeing her name in print and not someone else’s. She’d never suspected she’d have a reason to write about herself.
In fact, she’d never written about anyone she’d ever met or had even seen until she’d met the duke. Now that she could put a face and a personality to the Duke of Rathburne’s name, everything about the short weekly column seemed different. What had seemed more like a made-up story about people she didn’t know was suddenly very real.
She’d quickly finished the piece and handed it over to Eugenia to give to her maid, but Marlena had worried about it ever since. She’d had to mention herself and the duke. She couldn’t let a whole week pass without doing it. By then it would already be all over town that she was the Duke of Rathburne’s ward. Justine was seeing to that. If she didn’t get it to print, the gossip would be considered interesting but old news. Sales would go down and the monthly payment for Eugenia and Veronica would be less. She couldn’t let that happen.
There had been no other options to consider. Once Justine had heard from the duke himself that Mr. Olingworth’s letter was indeed true, she couldn’t contain her excitement any longer. The very next day she was out all afternoon visiting with Lady Westerbrook and Mrs. Barnes; she had even called on the Duke of Griffin’s unmarried sister, Lady Vera. The two had met at parties, but Justine admitted she didn’t know Lady Vera well. Yet Justine wanted the duke’s sister to know Marlena would be entering Society and they would look forward to having her over for tea at an appropriate time during the Season.
Marlena was already dreading the prospects of that meeting and many others when she started attending the afternoon card parties, balls in the Great Hall, at Almack’s, and too many other social occasions to think about. She’d written about Lady Vera, and her twin sister, Lady Sara, before she married. Marlena didn’t write about anyone once nuptials were said. And it wasn’t that she’d ever written anything truly bad about the twins. She hadn’t.
Though Marlena wasn’t guiltless by any means. She’d been behind the rumor that had Society thinking there might be retaliation against the twins because of their brother’s past misdeeds. That gossip had probably disturbed Lady Sara and Lady Vera’s Season. Thankfully, nothing had ever happened to the twins. She hadn’t expected it to. They were sisters of a duke. Who would be foolish enough to try and harm them or even ruin their Season?
Marlena had never been happy with herself for asking Mr. Bramwell to start that rumor. And she had expected to stop writing the column after the first Season, but Eugenia and Veronica’s plight continued to get worse not better as she’d hoped. She couldn’t bring herself to stop helping them.
Now that the time was drawing near, Marlena wasn’t looking forward to meeting anyone she’d written about. When she started the scandal sheet it hadn’t dawned on her that one day she’d enter Society and be meeting the very people she was gossiping about. Realizing that put an entirely different burden on her—and another measure of guilt, too. Just as she had after the first Season came to a close, Marlena was feeling the need to shut down the column once the upcoming Season was over, and hopefully Eugenia would be betrothed.
The back door opened and slammed shut immediately. Who would do something like that? Certainly not Eugenia or Justine. Tut went running from the room barking like a fiend. Before she could take the first step to see what was going on, Marlena heard footsteps bounding down the corridor. Veronica came charging around the entryway and into the drawing room. She flung herself face down on the settee and started weeping uncontrollably.
Tut came back in with her and continued to bark.
“Veronica, what’s wrong?” Marlena asked, dropping to her knees beside the settee. “What’s happened?”
There was only more weeping from her friend. Tut put his paws on the settee beside Veronica’s head and barked again. This wasn’t the first time either of them had seen Veronica storm over crying but it always upset Tut when it happened.
“Shush,” she told her pet. “I’m trying to calm her.” He whimpered at her and then barked again.
Mrs. Doddle rushed into the room, drying her hands on an apron that had goose feathers and dumpling flour all over it. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Portington this time?”
Marlena looked up at her housekeeper. “I don’t know yet. She doesn’t look injured so I’m sure she’s just upset about something again.” Marlena grabbed hold of Tut and reached to hand him up to Mrs. Doddle. “Would you please take him out to the back garden for me and I’ll find out?”
“Of course.” She bent down and took Tut in her arms. He scrambled to get down, knowing he was about to be put outside and miss the drama. Mrs. Doddle held firm. “Let me know if I can help the poor lady. She seems to have more than her share of distresses in her life, doesn’t she?”
Marlena smiled at her tenderhearted housekeeper and nodded. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do. Thank you.”
Marlena laid a comforting hand on Veronica’s shoulder but she made no move to stop crying or look up so Marlena gave her a slight shake. “Veronica, you must tell me what’s wrong.”
With her face hidden in the cushion, she mumbled a few words. The only word Marlena could make out was Eugenia.
A slight chill raced over Marlena and she shuddered. “Has something happened to your sister?”
Veronica nodded.
Marlena felt her whole body shake. “What?” Had she and Eugenia been found out? Had someone finally figured out they were responsible for Miss Truth’s Scandal Sheet?
There was no answer forthcoming so Marlena tried again. “Was she arrested? Was she struck by a carriage? Did she get hit on the head with something? Veronica, you must stop crying, sit up, and tell me. Where is Eugenia?”
Slowly, Veronica quieted and rose to a sitting position, shaking her head, sniffing, and wiping her big, pale-blue eyes. “No, she’s fine I’m sure. It’s Mr. Portington who’s not.”
Confused, Marlena shook her head. “But I don’t understand. When I asked you if something had happened to Eugenia you nodded. So what is this about? Is Mr. Portington hurt? I can’t help you if you don’t give me details about what is wrong.”
She sniffed again. “Mr. Portington bought some eggs.”
Heaven give me patience!
Marlena struggled to hold her tongue. She’d long known that Veronica was emotionally delicate, predisposed to spells of crying, to having days when she wouldn’t eat or get out of bed, but it was ridiculous to be this upset over something as simple and everyday as buying eggs.
And Marlena wanted to tell her that.
But she couldn’t. Certainly not in Veronica’s current state anyway.
Giving herself a few seconds to change her frame of mind from wanting to tell Veronica how silly she was being to cry over this and throw herself into a fit of despair, Marlena rose from her knees. Spouting unkind things wouldn’t help her friend feel better and could very well make her state of mind worse.
With a silent sigh, Marlena seated herself on the settee beside her distraught neighbor, and asked, “Why would his buying food of any kind disturb you so badly?”
“Because they’re Megalosaurus eggs!” she exclaimed, and then covered her face with her hands and started wailing again.
Marlena wasn’t familiar with that word but undoubtedly it was some new type of rooster, chicken, or perhaps a bird that Mr. Portington had heard about. Threatening her friend was the last thing she wanted to do, but at this point, she had to be firm.
“Stop crying please, Veronica, or I’ll have to leave the room until you get control of yourself.”
At that, Veronica dried her eyes, dropped her hands into her lap, and quieted to sniffles again.
“Now, I don’t know what you mean by these Megalo—”
“Megalosaurus eggs,” she responded softly, sniffing into a handkerchief she pulled from beneath her long sleeve.
“Yes. Why is that so bad?”
Veronica kept her gaze down on her hands resting in her lap. “Mr. Portington took the money I was to pay the modiste for Eugenia’s gowns, gloves, capes.” She twisted her fingers together. “All the clothing she needed for the Season. And he bought the eggs with them.”
Marlena still didn’t see why this was so disconcerting to her friend. There was quite a bit of difference in the price of a few eggs and a few gowns. He couldn’t have possibly used all the money Eugenia’s father had set aside for her Season.
“What exactly is a Megalosaurus?” Marlena asked.
“A giant reptile that lived millions of years ago. Bigger than an elephant and taller than a giraffe.”
Speechless for a few seconds, Marlena could do nothing but blink. Rapidly. “I’ve read about large bones and fossils of these bones being discovered in quarries and other places around England and throughout the world, but not the creature’s eggs. I haven’t ever heard of the word Megalosaurus before.”
“One of Mr. Portington’s friends, Mr. William Buckland, said the reptile hasn’t been officially named by the scientific community yet, but it means ‘great lizard.’ He came up with it and hopes they’ll approve the name he’s chosen before the end of the year. Soon anyway. He found the bones but not the eggs. It was a different friend who found those and talked Mr. Portington into buying them, assuring him they are indeed fossilized Megalosaurus eggs from one of these giant creatures. He said that once it has been named and cataloged as such by the Royal Society of Paleontology, the value of the eggs will increase tenfold or more.”
Marlena didn’t know enough about this subject to even talk about it. She did know Mr. Portington had purchased some strange things and all of them were sitting around his house. There was the purported fossil of the extinct and legendary dodo bird, which had cost him a large sum a year or two ago. One of his prized possessions was a burial cloth he claimed came from the tomb of an Egyptian soldier that dated from the times of Ramses II, and there was a tusk from a long-extinct animal that looked very much like an elephant tusk to Marlena.
“What do the eggs look like?” she asked Veronica.
“Dark-gray lumps of coal. They’re about the size of my hands cupped together. They are packed tightly in what looks like a fossilized breadbasket.”
“Oh,” Marlena said, not knowing what else to say about that for now.
She would have to do some reading about this subject before she could really understand what Veronica was talking about. However, that wouldn’t help with the fact that Mr. Portington had used the money Eugenia’s father set aside long ago for her debut.
Marlena knew Mr. Portington had managed to spend all the money left to Veronica by her parents and now he’d obviously started on Eugenia’s. Veronica had lamented to him about his gross expenditures on fossils and artifacts hunts for years to no avail. It was as if he were deaf. Either his eyes and nose were in an article or book about fossils, he was looking at one through a magnifying glass, or he was corresponding by letter with someone about them.
“Are you sure he used all of Eugenia’s inheritance?”
She nodded. “I asked him for money to pay the modiste and he told me he’d spent the rest of it on the eggs. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Veronica said. “Eugenia can’t attend the Season this year if she’s not properly gowned.”
“We won’t worry about the possibility of losing all the gowns and other things she needs just yet. The Season is still weeks away and there may be something we can do to purchase some of them. At least a couple. Maybe not all the capes, gloves, and headpieces but enough to keep her properly dressed. We won’t know what we can do until we have time to think about this.”
“I don’t know of anything we can do that will give us that much money.”
Marlena didn’t, either. Not right now, anyway, but knew she would try to come up with something. Despondency seeped into Veronica’s demeanor. Whenever her shoulders hunched and her chin sank toward her chest, she usually spent a day or two in bed. The last time she was in such a state was when Eugenia had told her the Duke of Rathburne was Marlena’s new guardian. Marlena had finally convinced Veronica that his guardianship of her would in no way affect the scandal sheet or what Marlena was doing to help the sisters stay in their house and keep up appearances in Society. Veronica was desperate for Eugenia to attend the Season, make a match, and have happiness and her own home.
“Veronica, look at me and smile,” Marlena said lightheartedly. “Come on, look at me. Smile. This is not a situation we can’t handle. We took on three rakes with the scandal sheet and we’ll come up with a plan to take care of this, too. We always do, don’t we?”
She faced Marlena but didn’t smile. Her eyes were red and puffy. Dull and distant.
“Let me have some time to work on this,” Marlena said earnestly. “I don’t know whether we’ll make much or any money from the book I wrote. I’ll write Mr. Trout a note and put it in with the next scandal sheet and ask. Listen to me,” she said, taking hold of Veronica’s shoulders. “You cannot take to your bed over this. Do you understand? Eugenia needs you to help her. So you’ll stay strong, right?”
She nodded again.
“Good. I’ll also ask Mr. Trout if he can pay us an advance for the scandal sheets. That’s a possibility. I’ve not missed a week writing them so I do believe he’ll do that for us. And perhaps if the book has sold a few copies, he’ll give us some payment on that as well. So we have hope and prospects to getting enough money to pay for some of the clothing.”
“I know the book is selling well,” Veronica said, seeming to perk up a little.
“Really?” Marlena asked curiously. “How?”
“I hear ladies talking about it,” she answered, brushing her dark-blond hair away from the side of her face. “They are enjoying it and recommending it to other friends, mothers, and aunts. Grandmothers and cousins.”
“Oh.” This information lifted Marlena’s spirits immensely. Didn’t Veronica think this was something that Marlena would have wanted to know? But rather than scold her friend for not sharing the news, she simply said, “Thank you for telling me. Now, it’s important we don’t mention to Eugenia that Mr. Portington spent money that was intended for her. We don’t want her worrying unnecessarily that she may not get the new gowns and other things she needs.”
“Yes. All right. I don’t want her to know what he did.”
“Good,” Marlena said, and then repeated, “Do not take to your bed over this and don’t say a word to Eugenia. Somehow I will see that all is well.”
“She must attend the Season, Marlena, and find a man who is not like Mr. Portington. I will not have her as miserable as I have been for all these years. I’d rather she spend her life unwed.”
“There’s no reason she should have to do either. You know, she’s quite fond of Mr. Bramwell. He’s young, handsome, and prosperous now that he’s inherited his father’s tailoring business. I’m told that his easy charm and intelligence have made the company even more successful.”
Veronica looked at her aghast. “He is a tradesman. Eugenia couldn’t possibly consider marrying him. I’ve seen her watching him in the mornings. He walks past our house every day on his way to work. And they talk over the hedge when they think I’m not watching, but I am. I believe he’s quite fond of her, too.”
“He is,” Marlena agreed.
“I appreciate his help, and we don’t mind if they visit over the hedge, but she can’t marry him. You know she’d never be accepted back in Society if she doesn’t marry a gentleman.”
Marlena wanted to say, Would you rather she marry a gentleman like Mr. Portington who has no mind for business, no heart for home or family, or would you rather she marry a man like Mr. Bramwell who works a successful business, doesn’t buy odd things, and is good to his mother? But she held her tongue. She couldn’t step into the sisters’ affairs any further than she already had. Writing the column and the book, giving them the money she made from them, was all she could do.
“You’re right, of course,” Marlena said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
And what was she thinking when she started writing about three gentlemen and other people she’d never met? The same thing she was thinking now: Veronica and Eugenia needed her. They had from the moment she’d met them. And though it was trying at times, she wanted to be needed by someone.
She’d thought Veronica would feel better, do better if she knew they were not letting Society forget what the Rakes of St. James had done to young ladies with their secret admirer letters. But Veronica hadn’t changed. She still had periods of hysterics and the depression that followed. The constant reminder to Society of what the rakes had done hadn’t helped her despair.
When Marlena wrote the first four columns and took them to Mr. Trout as a sample of what she could do, she’d never dreamed she’d still be writing them almost three years later. But what else could she do when her friends needed the money because Mr. Portington was so reckless with his allowance that the family was at times in dire financial straits? She was forced to keep doing it for their benefit.
It wasn’t fair Veronica’s husband had become so reclusive and didn’t take better care of his family. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to put his wife and her welfare first. Not take from his sister-in-law’s inheritance and send them all to the poorhouse because he bought giant lizard eggs!
With that thought, an idea came to Marlena. She didn’t know if she could actually do anything, but she would try. Turning to Veronica, she squared her shoulders and asked, “What is the name of the friend who sold Mr. Portington the eggs?”