Page 33 of A Most Improper Duchess
‘I heard you had gotten engaged. She’s quite pretty.’
Arley scrunched his fingers into a frustrated fist. ‘Winton. What brings you here?’
Arley cast about the room, but all eyes remained fixed on the line. How had he even been allowed in? But of course, this was Winton. He always found a way. Roguish to the point of charming and bearing such an uncanny resemblance to their father that the older nobles visibly turned in confusion when he came into a room, Winton would have greased, eased or begged his admittance. It was what he did. He found the simplest path through life. He had all the freedom of being a duke’s son with none of the responsibility.
‘You, of course. I wanted to say congratulations, and all that. I was going to send you a gift, but I’m a little light at the moment. And you likely have everything you need.’
Arley had learned of Winton’s existence the same way that his mother had learnt that her husband had kept a mistress—when his will had been read. He’d settled a house, some investments, a small allowance and a plea for compassion on the pair. And with the obedience of a duchess, his mother had continued the payments to them, and once he came of age, Arley had taken on his father’s wishes and done the same.
His bastard half-brother walked through life with the ease of a man with wealth and no burden. Six years his senior and taller than Arley, Winton’s dark hair stuck out at all angles. His uneven grin coupled with broad shoulders and his well-meaning, if slightly gullible nature, made him a favourite, despite his birth and the rumours that he was tupping every second nobleman’s wife. Everyone loved Winton, and they could. They didn’t have to pay his bills.
‘You have an allowance.’ Arley shuffled sideways to better follow Vivianne. ‘You should have received it just weeks ago.’
Winton rubbed the back of his head. ‘Funny story. I wound up in this card game at the Hog and Thistle. I swear I had a solid hand. Solid! But then, bloody Kenneth, Earl Bamford’s fourth son, do you know him? I don’t suppose you do. He had three aces, and I only had two! I lost it all.’
Arley’s teeth ground so tight together, it was a wonder he didn’t bust a molar. ‘No more, Winton. You need steady employment. You need to make some kind of contribution to society.’
‘And what do you do to contribute?’ Winton’s tone turned defensive, and a little dark. Arley knew him as an occasional angry drunk, where his affability turned to anger with jeyklesque speed, but had never known him to bite whilst sober.
‘I sit in the house. I make laws. I’m a duke, for heaven’s sake,’ he said.
Winton grunted but said nothing more.
‘Miss Vivianne Eloise Katherine Marie Chevalier,’ announced a page.
The few extra names had been Phineas’s idea. A way to add some mystery, and hopefully, muddy the trail.
Vivianne stepped forward. She swayed slightly with each step, until she took hold of the page’s arm, then steadied. She stepped forward before the vacant chair. The room quietened. Necks craned. She adjusted her posture, then dipped into a curtsy, and bent forward.
Not deep enough.
Not low enough.
Her feathers did not brush the floor.
Such a small thing, yet it set the room to hum with the observation.The French woman will not bow.She tried again, this time dropping lower, but her skirts puffed with air, and still she did not reach. Her arms flailed. Arley wanted to cry out, and he tried to push through the crowd, but the audience was too fixed in their stance, salivating and hungry, their bodies a wall, and before he could get to the edge of the group, Vivianne toppled forward. Her skirts gave a tinyfloofas the air left them, and she lay sprawled as her delicate toes kicked at the air, like two tiny pink fish in a white, rippled sea.
Winton laughed, his great donkey like guffaw setting off a chain of cackles, which rose into a crescendo. Even the royal couple had to work hard to smother their amusement. Arley forced his way through the crowd and tugged Vivianne to her feet, then he whisked her along the carpet to the fading symphony of criticism and spite.
‘He pushed me,’ she hissed as he hurried her into the foyer.
‘You just lost your balance,’ he said, hoping to calm her.
‘I am a ballerina of the Palais Garnier.’ Vivianne twisted from his grasp and prodded a finger into his chest in emphasis of each word. ‘I do not fall.’
‘A ballerina?’ They had almost knocked into Iris and Hamish, and as Iris looked between the two of them, her cheeks paled. She was too well travelled, too worldly to miss the implication of the word. ‘You are a dancer? From the opera?’ She scrunched her skirts. ‘And after last year—’ She looked to her husband, then to the floor at Arley’s feet. ‘Your grace, I would never judge, but the press does not care for our happiness. Elise walks a tightrope and may never be free from her sister’s scandal. My name is completely hidden from any advertising we do. Our reputation rests on your connection to the company. No one has morals as stringent as the masses. I am sorry to be so blunt, but if this were to become public, it would ruin Spencer and Co.’
Vivianne huffed something likeAnglaiseunder her breath, but all her rage left her. She was too good, and Iris too vulnerable, for her to hold her ire.
‘I had thought of this,’ Arley muttered. ‘Which is why…’
The mood of the room shifted. Not so much a chill, as a shift of focus, as if everyone’s attention had gone from the trivial and mundane to the magnificent. A few groups in the far edges turned from their conversation. Palace staff slowed their step. Hamish stopped chewing. A voice, rounded, cutting and firm, low enough to be indiscernible to others in the room but crisp enough to penetrate his ears perfectly, came from behind.
‘A telegram. You actually thought it appropriate to deliver your news via dots and dashes?’
Arley shut his eyes against the roll of guilt and annoyance in his stomach. ‘Now is not a good time for this conversation.’
‘Arley William Victor Charles Ferdinand Francois West, you will not educate your mother on the appropriateness of time.’
