Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOTHSHIRE HADN’T THOUGHT of her in some time.
Right after it had all happened, he’d been practically obsessed with her, tracking all her movements, having his servants inquire with her servants about her mood or the things she’d said. He’d found out far too much about her, intimate things he oughtn’t have known, like that her bleeding had come the day of her husband’s funeral, and that she’d barely reacted to the news, even though carrying her husband’s heir would have changed her standing quite a bit.
She hadn’t even indicated to anyone that it was a possibility, and truly, a woman who thought she might have a future viscount in her womb would usually say something, especially when some other man vying for the viscount title was in the process of sending her packing from her home.
He’d worried about her at that point, worried he’d done irreparable damage to her.
Women like that, titled women, they were so fragile, after all. Pretty fripperies, as he’d always thought.
He’d felt like a clumsy boy who had trampled a glass figurine. He’d tried to console himself that she was truly better off without Balley, even if she was being sent off to what sounded to him like exile in some drafty, northern dowager cottage.
But the others kept poking fun at him when he spoke of her.
Arthford said that he must rent a house in the north and call upon the pretty widow and marry her himself. You have never been interested in any woman at all, and you likely never will be again. This is your one chance, Nothshire.
And the others all laughed, even Rutchester, who had once confided in Nothshire that he was a virgin.
No one made fun of Rutchester, of course. One didn’t do that if one liked having his limbs attached to his body.
But then, time passed, and she was gone, and the one time he sent someone to spy on her in the north—check on her, he amended, not spy—he got a report that she seemed in good spirits and was happily ordering repairs to her dowager house.
Of course, he’d told the others that the only reason he was so concerned with her was because he worried she’d talk. He said it was about protecting them from gossip, though sometimes he wondered if they were all being particular idiots about everything.
They were dukes .
Certainly, they’d done a very dreadful thing, one that—if it came out—would be disastrous to their reputations. But in terms of true consequences, he didn’t know if there really would be any.
His own father had done things, awful things, and a great many people knew of them, and there had been no recourse. The King, he supposed, could order them all hanged or something. But the King was out of his head, as everyone knew. The Regent, then, but even so, it was highly unlikely that he would intervene. He was concerned with running a whole country, which happened to be at war, on a number of various fronts, both in the continent and in the Americas, and it was simply not something that he would care about, even if it was… dreadful, what they’d done.
Why they twisted themselves up into knots to conceal it, he wasn’t even sure anymore.
But they did.
And Champeraigne, well, he was a right arsehole, through and through.
Still, sometimes, he wondered if they all wouldn’t be happier if it came out. If they were free of it.
It was very important, at any rate, that they did not think she would tell anyone, because the others could be ruthless. Not Dunrose so much, true, but Rutchester, certainly, had no concern for human life of any kind, and Arthford had only a passing attachment to any kind of moral compass himself. He told himself that he couldn’t allow the viscountess to be harmed because it would be wrong .
It was strange, though, wasn’t it, how quickly he had begun to style himself as her protector.
“Did you find her?” said Arthford now, as Nothshire wandered back into the ballroom. “What did she say?”
“She’s no worry,” said Nothshire, who didn’t want to get into it. Truthfully, he’d been a bit stunned when that crafty expression had come over her features. Let me think about it, she had said. It was not what he’d expect from a woman like her.
Perhaps a woman like Bess would behave in that manner, but on women like that, something about it turned his stomach, a pretty thing curdled by a hard world, he thought. She didn’t seem curdled at all. She didn’t seem like an empty-headed frippery either.
He was fascinated by this woman.
“How can you be sure, though?” said Rutchester, who was eating a cucumber sandwich. He had an entire plate of them and he had been steadily eating them throughout the evening. “I don’t mind paying a visit to her and making quite sure she’s too frightened to ever speak.”
“No,” said Nothshire. “No, I have told you to leave her be, if you please, Rutchester.”
“I don’t mind killing women, if it comes to that,” said Rutchester around a cucumber sandwich. He chewed and swallowed. “I know everyone else seems to think that it’s different, but it’s not. Everyone bleeds the same, you know.”
“Oh, truly, must you always say things like that?” said Arthford, taking a cucumber sandwich off Rutchester’s plate.
“Did I say you could have that?” said Rutchester mildly.
Arthford shoved it into his mouth. “What are you going to do about it?” he said, his voice muffled as he chewed.
“That’s disgusting,” spoke up Dunrose. “Close your mouth when you chew, Arthford.”
Arthford opened his mouth to show Dunrose the contents of his mouth.
“Oh, Lord, must we all behave as if we are but twelve years old?” exploded Nothshire.
Arthford turned to show Nothshire his half-chewed mouthful.
Nothshire’s nostrils flared.
Arthford closed his mouth, sanguine. He chewed and swallowed. “Really, though, we must be careful if we’re going to be talking of these things here. I think we should go. How about we spend the rest of the night at Rathby’s?” It was a gentlemen’s club where they could retire to a smoky corner in relative privacy and talk without worry of being overheard.”
“We spend every night there,” said Dunrose. “Also, there are no women there.”
“We could go to Bess’s,” said Arthford with a shrug.
“No, I have bedded all the strumpets there thrice,” said Dunrose, looking about the room. “Here, there are women I have not even spoken to.”
“Who you can’t take to bed,” said Nothshire.
“I don’t mind looking at women,” said Rutchester, eating another cucumber sandwich. “Let’s stay. Nothshire says there’s nothing to worry about, and he’s the smart one.”
“ I’m the smart one,” countered Arthford.
“You’re the smart one because you read and you smoke a pipe?” said Nothshire.
“Precisely,” said Arthford.
“Pipes aren’t even fashionable,” said Dunrose. “Smoking isn’t fashionable. Which reminds me, has anyone seen my snuff tin?” He felt around in his inner jacket pockets. “I don’t know where I—” He broke off, smiling, pulling it out. “Oh! There.” He opened it and offered it to the others.
Rutchester took some; so did Arthford. Nothshire declined. The other three snuffed up the powdered tobacco together, gazing out at the dance floor.
“I’ve a dance with someone after this song, I think,” said Dunrose. “I just can’t remember whom. They should really give men dance cards as well. It would make everything easier. I’m going to start walking about and see if anyone looks at me as if she’s expecting me.”
Arthford sighed. “I don’t have anyone to dance with. I think I’ll see if I can remedy that.”
The two men walked off, leaving Rutchester and Nothshire together.
“Eventually,” said Rutchester, “we’re each going to have to marry one of them, aren’t we?”
“Not for another ten years,” said Nothshire with a shrug.
Rutchester turned on him. “If you marry her, you could keep her quiet, I think. She’d be tied to you, so she wouldn’t wish to destroy you, and you seem to like her.”
Nothshire let out a gurgling gasp at that.
“Oh,” said Rutchester, surveying what was left of his plate of cucumber sandwiches. “I thought that would please you. I don’t really understand it, I must say. Seems barking mad, lying there with some other person, entirely naked, and trusting them.”
“I am not interested in marriage,” sputtered Nothshire.
Rutchester pointed at him, balancing the cucumber sandwich plate on his other hand. “And nothing about how women aren’t just as conniving and untrustworthy as men, if you please. That isn’t true, no matter what anyone wants to think about it. Women are just men without pricks, if you want to know what I think about it.”
“Yes, well, thank you for that sage observation, Rutchester,” muttered Nothshire.
“She didn’t say she was going to keep quiet, though, did she?” said Rutchester. “You have some other plan to keep her quiet, though, and you’re not telling everyone what it is because you think Arthford will insist we hurt her, and you don’t want to hurt her. And, really, Nothshire, the others are stupid sometimes, but you seem less stupid than that, and I…” He sighed. “Don’t be wrong, all right? Don’t let whatever it is that makes men go vaguely out of their heads when it comes to women make you make miscalculations.”
“I won’t,” said Nothshire.
“Good,” said Rutchester. “I won’t let her talk, and you know that.” He stuffed another cucumber sandwich in his mouth.