“Come, Rose, we’ll go upstairs and get a cold cloth for your eyes.”
“She’ll need to come to London for fittings immediately, and I expect her to—” the duchess began instructing Flora, and Marguerite closed the door on the rest of her commands and led her sister away.
So Rose was to marry the Devil Duke of Temberlay. She glanced at her sister’s tearstained face, the picture of misery.
Lucky, lucky Rose.
“Thank heaven she’s gone,” Meg said half an hour later, watching from the bedroom window as the Temberlay coach rumbled down the driveway.
She turned to her sister, still curled on the bed sniffling. Sodden handkerchiefs littered the floor like blossoms around a coffin. Rose couldn’t have looked less like a bride, or the beauty their father had petted and adored.
“When is the wedding to be?” Meg asked, offering a fresh handkerchief.
“Mama said the duchess wants it done at once. She’s given us just enough time to get a wedding gown made up, and within a fortnight—” Her face crumpled and fresh misery soaked the linen. “Oh, Meg, what will I do? It will look very improper to wed in such haste, and to a man like him! Everyone will think that I am—” Tears made further speech impossible. “Papa would never force me to marry such a man. I daresay he’d forbid it!”
Meg shut her eyes. Their father was dead, and while his expectations for his daughters were all well and good while he was alive, he’d left them penniless, alone, and without provision for dowries or husbands. They were on their own, and must do what was necessary to survive. It was time to be strong and practical rather than romantic, but Papa hadn’t taught them that, hadn’t thought it would be necessary. Rose was no more than a lovely possession. First, as Papa’s pampered daughter, then in marriage, she would be like a fine horse or a breathtaking marble sculpture of a goddess, an object of admiration, but not expected to think or to manage anything more complicated than a dinner menu. Wycliffe’s philosophy called for the perfect wife to smile and bear heirs without demur, and in return she would be adored and pampered and kept safe from the harsh aspects of the real world. Rose was quite right. Nicholas Hartley was exactly the kind of man their father’s theories railed against, but there was no choice. They needed this match.
Meg squeezed her sister’s icy fingers. “They say he’s handsome, and rich, and very skilled at—”
“Marguerite Lynton!” Rose gasped. “It was amusing to read about him in the scandal sheets, to laugh at his antics, but marry him? The mere thought of him touching me makes me ill. God knows where his hands have been. Last I read they were around Lord Grimsby’s wife! And we don’t even know for certain that he’s handsome. We have only drawings in Amy’s scandal sheets to go by.” She smoothed a hand over her cheek, as if marrying an unattractive duke would be an insult to a penniless beauty like herself.
Meg resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “But if every woman in London wants him, surely that suggests he must be handsome,” she replied. And charming, and very, very good at—
“Oh, Meg, what a fool you are! Did you read of his latest scandal?” Rose leaped off the bed and retrieved the page from the bottom drawer of the dresser, where it was hidden under a pile of thrice-darned stockings.
“How could I have missed seeing it there?” Meg murmured as her sister thrust the crumpled page at her.
According to the latest gossip, a mere month out of date, Temberlay had fought a duel with a rich merchant who claimed that Devil had debauched his wife. The caricature showed him with horns, a forked tail, and a bullet clenched between perfect teeth while the merchant’s buxom wife shielded him from her husband’s brace of pistols. Behind her, a dozen London beauties tried to catch Devil’s roving eye.