Chapter 6 #2
“I see,” Violet mumbled, trying to keep straight the deluge of names hurtling her way. She was feeling a touch dizzy. Also, why had she asked for a fire to be lit in her room? The evening’s sunset had brought with it an unseasonable chill in the air, yet her bedchamber had turned stifling.
“I’m so sorry, miss,” Edith said earnestly. “Please don’t be angry. I know we all did wrong, but we didn’t mean any harm, I swear. We just couldn’t help but be curious when we discovered the author.”
“The author?” Violet quirked a brow, taking another hasty look at the text on each pamphlet’s cover. “These were published anonymously.”
“Yes, but …” Edith’s words faded to silence, and her mouth became an o. “You don’t know?”
Violet bit back a frustrated sigh. “No.” Since when had her lady’s maid developed a penchant for talking in riddles? “Kindly enlighten me.”
Edith hesitated for an aggravatingly long moment before leaning toward her ear, her voice becoming an overloud whisper. “The author was recently determined to be Mr. Benedict Prescott.”
Violet’s body jerked, and her fingers reflexively loosened, sending the pamphlets fluttering to the carpet in a disordered, salacious pile. “That’s impossible.”
Edith shook her head intently. “No, no, it must be true, miss. It’s the whole reason he was sent down from Cambridge last month. Like I said, Lord Frederick’s cousin is also a Cambridge scholar, which is where he got the pamphlets to give his valet, and his valet gave them to …”
Edith continued speaking, but Violet could no longer decipher a word. Her mind raced with too much other information to reconcile. Such as the fact that Benedict Prescott had been expelled from university. For writing erotic pamphlets.
The same Benedict Prescott who used excessive starch in his cravats. Who probably considered a treatise on foot rot titillating literature. Who’d agreed to their betrothal as detachedly as if he were arranging for the purchase of a flock of Cotswold Lions.
“Violet?” Arabella’s singsong voice rang through the corridor. “Violet, where have you gone?”
Panic froze Violet’s limbs for a single instant before she dove to the floor, scooping up the pile of pamphlets and racing across the room.
Her eyes darted around wildly from her bed to her night table to her vanity.
In a split-second decision, she shoved the pamphlets beneath her pillow and rushed to the vanity in the corner, plopping herself upon the bench and pivoting to face the mirror.
“I’m in my bedchamber,” she called, forcing her shoulders to straighten and motioning for Edith to open the door.
“I’ve brought the irises, along with some …” Arabella trailed off, her approaching footfalls halting in the middle of the room. “Are you both well?”
“Yes, of course.” Violet’s declaration sounded a touch pinched, but it was the best she could do.
Without turning around or even seeking Edith’s reflection in the glass—for she didn’t think she could face her lady’s maid again without her skin becoming crimson—she said, “Thank you, Edith, for your assistance. I won’t require anything else this evening, so you may go. ”
She assumed the subsequent rustle came from Edith’s curtsy, which was quickly replaced by the sound of her footsteps flying into the corridor and fading away. Not that Violet faulted her for her wish to escape—she’d do the same if she could.
She picked up a perfume bottle—anything to prevent her fingers from fidgeting, to keep from remembering how it felt when she held the pamphlets within her grasp and read the words they contained—and turned to face her sister.
Luckily, Arabella’s eagerness to plan wedding attire overshadowed any suspicion she may feel that something was amiss, and Violet let her pin flowers as she wished, managing an appropriate reply to her exclamations when required.
Violet no longer even noticed her tight stays.
Nor could she be certain, when at last the primping and coddling ended, what arrangement of flowers she’d agreed to.
She had Arabella stay to help her change from her wedding finery to her nightgown, then bid her sister goodnight for perhaps the last time she would ever do so under this roof.
With Arabella gone, she was free to climb into bed and embrace the thoughts that had inundated her from the moment Edith leaned in and whispered, Mr. Benedict Prescott. Thoughts of stiff bows and even stiffer cravats. Thoughts of caresses, nude flesh, pleasure.
She lifted her head so she could slide the pamphlets out from beneath her pillow and sank back down with one of the scandalous works in hand.
Thinking herself helpful, Arabella had extinguished Violet’s bedside lamp and the sconces before departing, which left only the flames in the grate for light.
Flames that remained strong enough, though, to illuminate the title. Mrs. Rumpteaser’s Footman. How provocatively named. Yet the title was secondary to the letters beneath. She traced them with her finger, following each line and curve. By an author who shall remain anonymous.
She flipped to the first page, squinting so she could make out the smaller print within and beginning to read. Wondering whom, exactly, she was marrying come morning.