Chapter Eleven
The sun was rising when Eleanor finally turned her key in the lock and pushed her front door open. Baskerville bounded across the room to rub against her legs.
“Just a minute,” she said, sweeping her viridian skirts out of clawing distance.
She reached behind her back to untie the ribbon at her waist and then shimmied until the dress was loose enough to step out of.
She hung it up where Baskerville couldn’t get to it and then removed her bustle, tossing it in the corner.
Her righteous anger—which had fueled her for the rest of the night, which had renewed every time her eyes traveled to the duke—had dissipated the moment she climbed into the hackney.
It had fizzled out like a sherbet that had been sucked for too long.
All that was left was… She didn’t even know what to name it. Disappointment? Disenchantment? Regret?
She should try to nap. Her dance with the duke had made Lady Wharton the most sought-after woman in attendance, and there had been no leaving until her employer was ready. The sun was already up, and she had to be at her actual job in just a couple of hours.
But instead of unlacing her corset and flopping onto the bed, she curled into the corner of the chaise longue with a pillow and reached for the paper and pen she’d left on the coffee table.
Dear Captain, she wrote, contorting her arms as Baskerville jumped on her lap and laid a possessive paw across her.
Here’s a copy of The Portrait of a Lady for you to read to the Tattler.
Eleanor had finished it the night before and had not yet shelved it. It was the only book in reaching distance. I have no idea if she’ll enjoy it or not. It was the first novel I encountered when I came home.
She hesitated. She could say something pithy about the frustrating main character, or she could scrunch the letter into a ball and throw it in the fireplace, or she could risk fundamentally shifting the easy camaraderie they’d built and say something vulnerable.
I’ve had a truly rotten day. Someone I thought was a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance, turned out to be not so friendly after all. In fact, they were rather two-faced.
The duke was not worth crying over, but still, disappointment sat like lead in her stomach. She had quite liked the man from the zoo with his deep, soulful eyes. She had liked the way her body had responded to his. She’d been looking forward to meeting him again. And now she wasn’t.
I don’t know why you were the first person I wanted to speak with. Maybe it’s because you can’t disappoint me. I don’t even know your name. You’re both a friend and not real at the same time.
—Booklover
Her letter had arrived that morning, well before it usually did. Peter wondered if she’d had as sleepless a night as he’d had. Damn that compositor. Infernal woman.
Over ham on toast and a hot coffee, he sought distraction in her words. A warmth suffused him, knowing she’d turned to him for comfort.
He pulled out the pocket folder he’d taken to carrying around.
Dear Booklover,
I promise I have corporeal form, although the idea of existing and not existing simultaneously is interesting. Hamlet insists it’s a choice, but perhaps it isn’t. Someone much smarter than I should look into that.
Unfortunately, I know all too well what it’s like to question the authenticity of your relationships. You could say that it’s the greatest challenge of my life. I was lucky tonight that someone was so honest about their opinion of me so readily, even if that opinion cut deeper than it should have.
My only advice is to not trust anyone for as long as possible. Years, if you can. If, over the course of a decade, they show no signs of deceit, then it is safe to share yourself with them.
Although, strangely, I’ve shared more of myself with you than I have with some of my closest friends. Perhaps I need to adjust my thinking. Trust no one for a decade or unless you’ve never met them.
—Captain O.T.N.
“She is a pill. I would sooner marry an actual wolf than shackle myself to a person so backward in their thinking.”
Meg and Winnie exchanged a look.
“What was that?” Jac asked, turning to her sisters. “I know that you’re saying things without saying things. That is most unfair when I cannot see you.”
“We said nothing,” Winnie replied.
“You said nothing out loud. Don’t tell me you’re not saying plenty without speaking. At least Meg speaks volumes without making a sound. You just speak volumes.”
Winnie narrowed her eyes. “It is not our fault you cannot see our facial expressions.”
Jac’s lips pursed. The longer the blindfold had been on, the crankier she’d become. “Good sisters would say their facial expressions out loud under the circumstances.”
“Good sisters would understand that the world cannot bend to their whims because they chose to have a fully unnecessary surgery.”
Peter sighed. He’d hoped that Jac’s current impediment would have triggered a ceasefire in his sisters’ constant bickering, but it had only intensified it.
He considered begging Meg to take Winnie home with her when she left, if only to halve the noise for a little while, but there were shadows under Meg’s eyes and she looked drawn and thin.
He couldn’t subject her to Winnie’s constant prattle.
Besides, as aggravating as his youngest sister might be, he would never ask her to leave. It had been difficult for the girls to grow up without a mother or father. He wouldn’t let her think she couldn’t count on him, too.
Meg cleared her throat. “Winnie and I merely shared a look of skepticism. Peter’s vocal repudiation of Miss Wright seems too strong to be genuine dislike.”
“We think he doth protest too much,” Winnie added. “Especially since he waltzed with her when he would waltz with no one else.”
Peter drew in a deep breath. “I told you, I waltzed with her only to escape Lady Cecilia.”
“After having an assignation with her in the hallway at the Duchess of Wakefield’s ball.”
“And another assignation at the zoo, of all places.”
Last night’s inquisition had begun the moment he’d returned to the ballroom, and within ten minutes they’d extracted the details of every interaction he’d had with the wretched woman.
“It is a shame that Britain is at peace,” he said. “You three would be exceptional interrogators.”
Winnie pounced, her finger pointed at him like a claw ready to slash an artery. “So, you admit it. You like Miss Wright.”
“I said nothing of the kind.”
“But you did! We said you have a tendre for Miss Wright and you said we had ferreted the truth from you.”
Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “Neither of us said anything of the sort. I merely suggested that you have the tenacity of Sir Walsingham’s most dogged interrogators, but that is neither a compliment nor an acknowledgment of veracity.
Walsingham was known for drawing out questionable confessions through unpleasant means. ”
Her brows furrowed, and tears welled. Tears that he’d fallen for many times before he’d realized she could cry on command.
Meg had never tried it, to his knowledge, and Jac had needed raw onion to fool him.
Winnie had used tears to tunnel under his boundaries before she’d reached five years of age. “Are you calling us unpleasant?”
“This conversation is certainly not enjoyable,” he replied.
“This conversation has certainly gotten off track.” Meg waved a hand that Jac couldn’t see but caused Winnie to settle back in her chair with a mutinous look.
“You say the only conversations of note that you’ve had during your entire time in London have been with this Miss Wright, and that she’s well read, interesting, and beautiful. ”
He had said that she seemed properly educated compared to the debutantes society had thrown at him, that she possessed unusual curiosities about mass casualty events, and that, yes, she was tolerably pretty.
But fine. She was well read, interesting, and beautiful.
Under other circumstances, he would agree.
“She is also a companion,” he said. “She works in a printing house. I am a duke.”
“Pffft. Exactly,” Jac replied. “You’re a duke. You can do what you like. Even if society disapproves of the match, they won’t do so to your face.”
She would have made a good lawyer. All three would have made good lawyers. What had he done to deserve that? “Society might disapprove to her face, though.”
“Aha!” Winnie jumped from her chair. “So, you do care about her—ack!” She yelped as Meg yanked her girdle and she hit the chaise longue with a sharp oof.
Peter cleared his throat. “Society would be unkind to any bride who is not one of them. I said nothing of Eleanor.” In fact, his thoughts were with someone else entirely.
He had never broached the topic of class with Booklover because he had no desire to reveal his rank.
But that meant he did not know where in the social strata she fit.
“Is the problem that Eleanor works, brother?” Meg asked, still fixated on the wrong woman. “Because she wouldn’t have to once she’s a duchess.”
The problem wasn’t that she was employed.
He liked the idea of a wife who was as ambitious as he was.
“Working is not the issue. The issue is that she comes across as intelligent and amiable, but when you scratch the surface, she is nothing but a sharp-tongued shrew who is extraordinarily disagreeable.”