“How unusual.” And, after a moment: “The Duchess of Cosway’s daughter-in-law in company with a traveling musician.” Jemma grinned. “Is your aunt still alive?”

Isidore nodded. “She leads a rather quiet life now. A few years ago she professed herself tired of wandering about Europe. We kept expecting that Cosway would return. So we would say, one last trip to Vienna! But somehow there was always another trip, and never a message from Cosway. She moved to Wales when I turned twenty-one.”

“By herself?”

“No. She married a painter.”

“Really? Anyone I might have heard of?”

Isidore said it reluctantly. “One of the Sargents.”

“Not Owen Sargent! The man who painted Lord Lucien Jourdain in the nude with just a bunch of violets?”

“The very one.”

“Then you must have seen the portrait,” Jemma said, delighted. “Were the violets just where you might expect? And did he wear his wig? I heard so, but I couldn’t countenance it.”

Isidore sighed. “I don’t know how it happened, but I’m so much more strait-laced than my family. Do you know, Jemma, I really didn’t wish to see Lord Jourdain without his clothing?”

“Isidore…” Jemma said imploringly.

“Of course he wore a wig. And a patch. I remember being surprised by the size of his—ahem—violets.” Isidore picked up her cold tea and drank a sip, put it down again. “Perhaps I should follow Cosway to the country and force the question, Jemma. I can strip myself naked in his bedchamber and see how he responds. If he responds.”

“It depends on how much you wish to be a duchess,” Jemma replied. “It could be embarrassing for both of you.”

“I do want to be a duchess. I’ve thought of myself as a duchess for years. And all those years I told myself that I would accept whatever sort of man the duke turned out to be. I steeled myself to accept a man with one leg, or any number of vices. I just kept telling myself that I wanted to be truly married, to be able to have children, and stop living this half existence.”

Jemma nodded. “I absolutely understand, darling.”

“So what’s the real difference between a one-legged and a mad husband? I can tolerate this sort of derangement on a daily basis. He doesn’t hear voices the way Lord Crumple does.”

“Good point,” Jemma said. “You’re wonderfully brave.”

“But if Cosway is unable to respond to me…perhaps not.” Isidore pushed all her eggs to one side of her plate. “I can’t imagine myself choosing a consort simply in order to provide an heir. I’m not a very adventuresome woman.”

“Most women would not be in your untouched state, given a husband who didn’t return from Africa for this many years. You are, as they say in the Bible, a pearl above price.”

“I’m a tedious pearl,” Isidore said, moving all her eggs across the plate again. “I realized that during my stay at Lord Strange’s estate. I don’t want to have interesting conversations about French letters, or watch dissolute plays featuring half-naked mythological gods. And I don’t want a marriage predicated on my need to find a substitute in the bedchamber.”

“Then you should certainly determine if Cosway is capable,” Jemma said. “If he is not, you can annul the marriage. If he is, you can resign yourself to his eccentricities.”

Isidore nodded. She had read Tacitus on how to conduct a war, and Machiavelli on how to conquer a kingdom. She could launch a campaign so overwhelming that her husband would never know what hit him. The dowager duchess was almost certainly attempting to convince her son to wear clothing befitting a duke. Well, Isidore was going to spend her time trying to get him out of those same clothes.

She pushed her plate away. Advance planning was crucial to any plan of war. “If I send a message to Signora Angelico, she will send me a nightdress on an urgent basis.”

Jemma grinned. “That’s a brilliant trap. A capable man, presented with such a nightdress and your figure inside, will react swiftly. If not…”

Isidore reached up and pulled the bell cord to summon her maid. Cosway’s days as a bachelor—and a virgin—were numbered.

Chapter Five

Revels House

February 22, 1784

Simeon’s father had rarely made use of his study. He was an outdoors sort of man. Simeon’s happiest childhood memories were of afternoons spent tramping through wet forests, looking for game.

It made him uneasy to walk into his father’s study and sit down behind his great oak desk. He felt as if his father would erupt back into life, bellowing at him. Simeon shook his head. His greatest teacher, Valamksepa, had taught him the importance of maintaining peace by exerting personal control. He could hear the man’s soft voice in his ear, telling him that hunger, pain, thirst, lust…all of those things were nothing more than insects biting at the soul.

A man walked through life on the path he created for himself. He did not allow pettiness to lead him astray. Valamksepa’s teachings had kept Simeon calm in the face of tribal unrest, the death of half his camel-drivers from intestinal fever, and fierce sandstorms. This was nothing in comparison.

Simeon took a deep cleansing breath and sat down, pushing aside stacks of paper. Then he paused and looked again. An undated bill of trading for purchase of thatchery materials, presumably for mending village roofs. He looked at the next one. An imploring letter from a cottager, requesting winter wheat. His mother’s spidery handwriting noted, “Done.” He glanced through the first ten or fifteen. Only a very few contained his mother’s notations; the rest appeared to have been ignored.

Anger is nothing more than the other side of fear…and both drive a man to his knees. A man never falls to his knees from anger, lust, or fear. The three most dangerous emotions.

Simeon picked up a few more of the papers and read them. Valamksepa had forgotten to speak of guilt.

Hours later, he raised his head from a stack of papers and stared blearily at his butler.

“Your Grace, would you like me to bring you a light breakfast?”

Simeon ran a hand through his hair. “What time is it?”

“Eleven in the morning. Your Grace ought to go to bed,” Honeydew said disapprovingly.

Had he really stayed up all night? He had. And yet more papers awaited, stacked in crazy piles around the desk. He’d found a new cache at four in the morning, letters from solicitors pleading for their clients’ payments, letters from his father’s solicitors containing information about the estate, about investments…The only thing that seemed to characterize this particular pile was that they were written on hot-pressed paper rather than foolscap.

Could it be that his mother hadn’t responded because she didn’t like the type of paper the writers employed?

The very idea of asking her made him want to groan.

“Breakfast,” Honeydew prompted.

“Yes.”

“No doubt you would like to bathe before eating,” the butler said, “I shall order a footman to prepare one for you directly.” It wasn’t a hint. It was more like a royal command.

“I have a few more papers to read,” Simeon said. At some point people in his household would have to stop treating him like the rebellious sixteen-year-old boy he had once been.