Chapter 21
It’s not that the garden disappointed.
It’s as advertised. The space is lush, with winding paths framed with green hedges and plants to create pockets of privacy.
Statues and water features are strategically placed every so often so that no one forgets how much taste (and money) the Devonshires have.
And cutting-edge electric lights give the night a twinkling glow with dim bulbs emanating from lampposts, wall sconces on the exterior of the house, and bulbs hanging from branches.
Like a beautiful beer garden with an eye for antiquity, which I would definitely frequent.
It’s not even the crowd itself. Although I’m still not a fan, I’ve gotten used to giant groups of people all wanting to socialize with me.
It’s one person in particular.
Charles is here. I’ve been doing so well avoiding him that I hoped he was a figment of my imagination. Or that he had to leave the country on business. Yet here he is, dressed like he belongs in the Georgian period, elaborate gray wig perched arrogantly on his head.
I stiffen next to Leo, but he must take it as general nerves and not person-specific terror because he urges me forward like he’s a fan of exposure therapy. The movement, and the subsequent screech of my shoes on the patio as I try to stop the movement, draw too much attention to us.
Like the attention of Charles, who is now looking at me with a glare so full of intense dislike and suspicion that if England could weaponize it, they wouldn’t have lost the American Revolution.
But emotional impact of his glare aside, he hasn’t called out for some burly footmen to roughly remove me, so he hasn’t gotten the letter back from India saying I’m a fraud. Point, me.
For now.
It does make me grateful for nineteenth century lack of instant communication. Even if I haven’t been able to check social media for days, despite constantly reaching for a phone that isn’t there.
Leo, smug in his self-confidence, strides forward like he’s the damn Duke of Devonshire and owns this memorial to excess.
He deftly avoids Charles, whether because he can sense that I don’t like the man, he noticed the death glare Charles is throwing my way, or he just doesn’t care about him, I’ll never know. But I appreciate it.
Charles doesn’t, and he looks even madder when Leo walks past him without stopping even though Charles is staring straight at him, clearly wanting to talk.
I don’t think it makes me a bad person to feel glee at the mixture of shocked, affronted anger on Charles’s face, but even if it did, I can’t stop it.
The giddy feeling doesn’t last long. After one dance with me, Leo abandons me with my chaperone and the food table while he dances with heiresses. Doing exactly what I told him to do.
Leaving me vulnerable to the masses. The nosy, arrogant, terrifying masses.
If I weren’t in this dress, I could maybe climb over the fence.
Well, with some help. Step one being someone giving me a foothold over the fence.
Which will probably necessitate step two: someone bringing me a ladder to climb over, because the foothold won’t help much.
Charles is the first one to sense I’m vulnerable and smell blood in the water, swimming through the crowd of people to attack me. He opens his mouth to say something, showing off his menacing teeth so I have time to worry about the attack before it comes.
“You came to the ball with Lord Basildon.” His first salvo is a statement he means to be a question, inviting me to supply details.
“Yes.” I don’t elaborate. Because the more information I give, the higher the chance I say something that he can use against me. Or that could be proven a lie.
“That’s unusual.”
“Her Majesty can’t take more time out of her busy schedule than she already has for me, but she’s sent a chaperone.
And she’s very fond of Lord Basildon.” A chaperone who has so far done nothing to stop anything from happening, which makes her the best chaperone in my book.
Probably not in Victoria’s, but I’m not telling.
Charles gives me a half-snarl in response, not liking the reminder that Victoria is looking out for me. “Her Majesty will know the truth soon. The response will come from India any day now. Will she be so fond of you then, I wonder?”
I quirk my eyebrow in what I hope is a flippant response. Because inside I am quaking over just that thing happening. “We’ll see.” I stare him directly in the eyes. He doesn’t see what he wants to, which is the fear churning in my stomach.
But his relentless, bitchy politeness is waking up a part of me that I don’t often use back home. The same part that stood in front of a group of strangers in a pub and asked them for help. The same part that is done with Charles.
“How is Lady Dumfries?” that wicked part of me asks. I smile placidly with the words. Who knew that pettiness was such a good solution to managing fear?
Charles straightens up immediately, his posture better than I’ve ever seen it.
And since he usually walks like he has a stick up his ass, that’s an impressive feat.
“I am sure she is fine. I would not know the details,” he says through gritted teeth.
He abruptly turns around to find someone else to harass for the night.
This is information I can use when that letter comes in. Maybe I can get his silence long enough to disappear on my terms. I’ve already started the blackmail route, might as well go all in until I’m safe.
I can do this. I can survive; I will survive.
Leo comes back at that moment, when I’m high on my own abilities and have Gloria Gaynor stuck in my head. “Are you having a good time?” Leo holds out a glass of champagne for me, which I take, and then we start walking around the garden, Anne trailing behind us.
“I think I am.”
“Good. We must be growing on you.”
“Some of you more than others, at any rate.”
“For my own happiness, I will assume that I am in the ‘more’ group rather than the ‘others’ group.”
“Assume what you need to get you through the night.” He is one hundred percent the person who has grown the most on me. But his ego, which is still so big even after getting knocked down by scandal and debt, doesn’t need to be fed any more.
Leo laughs and shakes his head.
“How is your night going? Are we any closer to taking down your game?” I ask, lowering my voice so Anne doesn’t hear about our plans.
“That sounds unnecessarily bloody.”
“Minus the blood, it’s an apt metaphor,” I say over his laughter.
“You’ve developed stratagems and camouflage.
” I point to myself, both the stratagem and camouflage in this scenario.
“You’ve dressed for the hunt.” Now I point at his cheeky calves and the gold embroidery on his jacket.
“You’ve identified your prey.” I jerk my head over the partygoers; his heiresses must be in there somewhere.
“And I have my weapon ready at the ready?” Leo asks dryly, getting into the spirit of the metaphor.
“Do you mean your…” I don’t know if I’m allowed to say penis during this time period.
“My charm, Princess.” He sounds scandalized, but he’s also laughing so I have no idea. “What were you thinking was my weapon?”
Now we’re both laughing. “Have I scandalized you again?”
“Yes. To the stocks with you, woman.” His voice gets unusually deep when he growls out that last part and my lower body immediately clenches in desire.
Okay, I can see why Queen Victoria fell bonnet over heels for John Brown when he called her woman.
“Are all the women like you in this time you’re from? ”
I look around to make sure no one (Charles or someone who hates me and equally wants me to get taken down) heard that.
When I’m sure everyone is busy and Anne is too far to hear our whispers, I reply.
“Women have more freedom to be who they want. But in general, if a woman wants to talk about penises.” I whisper the word, not because I’m ashamed to talk about genitalia but because I’m trying to keep a low profile over here.
“She can. If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to. ”
“That sounds not altogether unpleasant. People should be able to do what they feel is right without the public indignation. Especially when saying it doesn’t harm anyone.” With all the scandals in his family history, he is intimately acquainted with how harmful public indignation can be.
“It’s not perfect. There are still people who think women should act a certain way and sexual harassment is still a big problem.
But it’s freer than here, mostly. Women can own property outright and have more access to education, jobs, and public spaces.
They don’t even need chaperones.” Although even in this era, not everyone is confined to the ton’s rules.
Poor women who need to work do without chaperones, but the jobs they can have are limited.
Richer women, on the other hand, have more access to education but are often limited in what they can do in public.
And then there were a few, like Ida Pfeiffer, who travelled alone, damn the consequences.
He looks suitably impressed at the revelations. “How else is your home different from ours?”
That’s a giant can of worms. “In too many ways to list. In ways that would probably be dangerous to talk about. Let’s just say that technology keeps advancing at a pace that would shock you, even though you’ve seen the Industrial Revolution.
And while women have more options for what they want to do in life, it’s still harder for them than it is for men.
And commoners get way more autonomy. But a lot of people still struggle to survive in ways they shouldn’t, with the advances in technology and medicine.
” Then I add one more because I can’t resist. “A title alone doesn’t help much, but I guess it can still have some weight in certain circles. ” Not circles I’m invited to.