Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“But of course we must be Greek goddesses,” Annis declared. “Why would we dream of being anything else?”
“How about saints? Famous female scholars? Medieval queens?” Lucasta asked. The Gorgons were gathered in Annis’s parlor this time, keeping away the chill of the glowering spring day with a fire and an endless supply of tea. “That dress, at least, would provide more coverage.”
“If you’re to be out and about all the day, then we’ve to choose your costume when left to our own devices at Mlle. Beaudoin’s,” Minnie answered. She shook out a sheer length of linen that gleamed like a pearl. “You’ve never touched anything so fine, and we’ll feel queenly wearing them.”
Lucasta passed a length of the fabric between her fingers.
She supposed, if it came from Mlle. Beaudoin’s, the linen was from Jem’s warehouse.
She had indeed felt something this fine—the silk brocades Jem had wrapped her in that day in his shop.
She’d reveled in the luscious weave sliding over her skin.
And he’d kissed her.
She hadn’t yet managed to tell her friends about that.
“Which goddesses are we to be, then?” she said.
Annis nodded her head at the smallest girl. “Selina is to be our Aphrodite. Goddess of love.”
Selina dimpled and giggled, which made Lucasta wonder if she had missed something.
Why was Selina claiming the realm of love?
Lucasta had been out so often, on calls with Cici, seeing to lessons with Judith and Bertie, that she’d neglected her friends.
They’d chosen their costumes for the masquerade ball at Ranelagh Gardens without her.
“Annis, naturally, is Artemis, goddess of the moon,” Minnie said. That made perfect sense for Annis, their astronomer.
“I plan to wear a bow and quiver of arrows,” Annis said. “I’m not certain I won’t be called upon to put an arrow in someone who deserves it.”
“And you, Minnie?”
“Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom. I shall carry a spear and my aegis with the head of Medusa.”
“Then whom does that leave for me?” Lucasta wanted to be Athena, with her breastplate and spear, but she understood this was punishment for her absence.
“Hera,” Annis announced. “Chief among goddesses, Queen of Heaven. Selina is going to fashion you a crown.”
“Hera! The jealous wife who is always turning people into things?”
“Protector of women and of marriage,” Minnie said. “It’s Homer who makes her a nasty little termagant. She was revered in the Archaic period. Hera was ruler of the heavens first, remember. Zeus gained his throne when he married her.”
The thought occurred to all four of them at the same time.
“If Trevor hasn’t declared himself yet, he will when he sees you as Hera,” Selina whispered. “He’ll be reminded of all he stands to gain.”
“Which might be very little, in the end,” Lucasta pointed out.
“Aunt Cornelia might live a score more years, which I sincerely hope she does. My grandmother the Dowager Viscountess might yet succeed in persuading her to confer everything on my cousin the current Viscount Frotheringale, which I believe is the sole aim of her existence. Aunt Cornelia might leave everything in an endowment for Miss Gregoire’s, or for that secret society she’s in, the Daughters of Minerva or some such.
There’s no point in wedding me for a fancied inheritance that might never come to be. ”
“He might simply like you for yourself, Lucasta,” Selina suggested.
“Piffle,” Lucasta replied. “I sincerely doubt he feels we’ll suit any better than I do. I only plan to marry—if I marry, it will be for esteem. Someone like—well, never mind.”
Her thoughts went at once to Jem. In the usual way of things, a gentleman kissing a genteel young lady led to a declaration and then an offer. He had kissed her in secret, true, with none the wiser. They had not discussed the impropriety—could not, with Bertie there.
And she did not want a declaration, did she? A draper, a tradesman from London did not fit in Lucasta’s plans to open a music studio in Bath. A marquess’s grandson and a vicar’s orphan—that was the difference between heaven and earth, to be laughed out of thought.
He had told her why he played the Smart Jeremy. The role he assumed to gain custom. It made sense; the calculation did not offend her, not to someone who also made her own way, or tried to.
He had not, in the days since their time in his shop together, looked around the room after talking with her at a party as if he were taking the measure of who watched them. He had seemed completely absorbed in Lucasta.
And that kiss. Such a kiss gave a girl ideas. Unexpected, sleep-stealing, outrageous ideas.
Annis coiled her long form into an upholstered chair and glanced at Minnie. “It’s time we told her.”
“Oh, I’m sure it cannot be true,” Selina protested.
“My source is not the most trustworthy,” Minnie said.
“And it’s just a malicious piece of gossip, after all,” Selina added.
Lucasta scanned their concerned faces. “If it’s malicious, you ought to tell me.”
The others looked at Minnie, who straightened in her chair and looked Lucasta in the eye. “Ashley told me that Rudyard took up with you to make you the center of attention. In revenge for your epigram about his cravat.”
Lucasta’s stomach sank. “Lord Ashley said that?” Her mouth filled with sand at the words. Ashley was one of Rudyard’s closest friends.
The man she knew could not be so petty.
Not Jem. But Smart Jeremy, the persona he’d fashioned as his shield and spear to carry him through the fashionable world—who knew what defenses he needed to keep his place on ground so hard-won, so tenuous to hold?
Annis released the rest of it in a rush.
“Ashley said Rudyard only took note of you because Clara Bellwether said that Lady Evers means to make you her heir. He knew you would gain notice, with that gossip circulating. He meant to bring you to attention. And—” Here her friend hesitated.
“Something Rudyard said led Ashley to believe he intended for you to be ridiculed.”
Lucasta stared at the row of delicate porcelain vases lining the mantel above the fire, her face frozen.
So now she knew. Rudyard—Smart Jeremy—had looked first at her because of spleen over her spiteful remark.
But he had looked again—and pursued her—only because of that cursed gossip about her cursed supposed inheritance. Not for herself alone.
But to make a mockery of her.
“Why would Lord Ashley tell us this now?” she managed.
Selina leaned forward on the flowered chaise. “Because Rudyard has been spending so much time with you. I believe Lord Ashley did not want you to—misinterpret his intentions.”
“Think Rudyard has designs on me, you mean.”
“Oh, he has designs,” Annis said in a hard voice, pouring Lucasta another cup of tea. “The angling cad.”
Minnie hesitated. “Normally I wouldn’t put the least value on anything Ashley has to say. But for once in his thoughtless existence, I believe he feels concerned that you might be hurt.”
“Mr. Plimpton doesn’t believe Rudyard attends you out of spite,” Selina hurried to say. “He thinks it is because he—Rudyard, that is—wants you to be seen in his shop.”
Lucasta slumped in her chair as if she’d gone boneless. Jem had taken her to meet his sister, introduced her to his half-siblings. He’d persuaded the governors of the Foundling Hospital to put her in charge of the benefit concert.
He had, indeed, brought her to his shop. In fact he’d been dressing her in his fabrics for weeks.
Her throat closed against the words. “So all this time—his attentions—because he wants to make fun of me, or he wants to make an example of me.”
Because he knew, if she stood in line for an inheritance, she would suddenly be the focus of attention. He was drawn to her for the same reasons as everyone else.
Not for herself alone.
Why should she be surprised? He’d told her his one aim was to bring the beau monde to his shop. Clara Bellwether, a baronet’s relict, had made him Smart Jeremy. What might a poor orphan connected to barons and viscounts do?
“We don’t know that, darling.” Annis reached over and took her hand. “But Ashley warned us that you should not put too much stock in Rudyard’s attentions. He’s not sincere.”
Heat rushed over the face Lucasta had thought frozen. That kiss, that molten, shattering, world-spinning kiss. What had it been for, then? It was the kind of kiss that plucked at a girl’s soul, whether she wished it or not.
The fire in the hearth felt hot on her face, and her back ice-cold.
“I am sure Lord Rudyard must see how wonderful you are,” Selina said. “He may have begun with those intentions, but what if his feelings have changed?”
His own sister had thought he was besotted, and Bertie too. Could he be playing her so deftly? But what did he stand to gain by toying with her heart?
Revenge, perhaps, for calling him Smart Jeremy. For thinking him as prejudiced as the rest of his class.
And to demonstrate that he could. That he had that power.
“Can you ask him about it?” Annis inquired. “Would he give you an honest answer?”
“I don’t know.” Lucasta picked up Minnie’s costume spear and hefted it in her hands. Of a sudden she could understand the blind, aching rage that might make a goddess punish a poor mortal for a slight. “The masquerade is three days away, isn’t it? Perhaps I’ll speak to him then.”
“And find out Ashley is just playing a cruel trick, which is just like him,” Minnie said. “I’ll box his ears if that’s so.”
“Why do you suppose Hera always tormented the helpless women that her husband pursued?” Lucasta mused. “Why did she never punish him?”
“Because she knew if she fought him directly, she’d lose,” Minnie said soberly. “Even goddesses are subject to the will of the gods.”
Impossible to think that kiss that had shattered her world could have been calculated. His face, when they’d parted, looked as pole-axed as she’d felt.