Page 58 of How to Ruin a Duke
He took a pear tart and left her holding the basket.“Your imagination has got the better of your common sense, my lady.I can procure the favors of the six most sought-after courtesans in Londonat the same timeif I please to.What I seek from you is a rarer skill than what they offer, also of more value to me.”
Edith was angry, but also caught in a confusion of contradictory emotions.She had long since noticed Emory’s broad shoulders, his sardonic humor, his vigilance where his family’s wellbeing was concerned.She knew he genuinely liked Italian opera and also enjoyed a ribald farce.He gave generously to charities and was incensed at the cost royalty inflicted on the national exchequer.
He was, in other words, a good man, if lamentably short of charm.He was alsoattractive.Not in the flirtatious, polished manner of his brother, but in a robust, unapologetically masculine sense.The notion of the duke sharing a bed with a half dozen courtesans put that attractiveness before Edith with startling vividness.
And yet, he was offering her some sort of proposition?“Half a dozen, Your Grace?At the same time?”
He took a bite of pear tart.“One doesn’t discuss such topics with a lady, but I have it on good authority that more than two at once becomes taxing from an organizational standpoint.Shall we return to the matter at hand?”
The duke’s expression was perfectly composed, and yet, his eyes danced.
Edith set aside the basket of pear tarts.“I’m prepared to listen to your proposition, but I will not be insulted in my own home.”
“Nor do I offer you any insult.Quite the contrary.Do have a tart.They’re quite good.”
“Do stop giving me orders, sir.”
The smile broke over the rest of his features, from his eyes to his mouth, dimples grooving his cheeks.“Why my mother ever let you go is yet another vexing mystery.”
“She had no choice, Your Grace.I was determined to leave.I had had enough of service, and though she offered me an increase in salary, my mind was made up.”
The duke wasn’t buying that load of wash, but Edith had no intention of providing him a more honest version of the facts.He would not believe her any more than the duchess had.
“A discussion for another time, perhaps,” he said, the smile fading.“Her Grace was much happier when you kept her company.We were all much happier, come to that.And now we areunhappyin part because of this damned book.You are ideally suited to help me solve the mystery of its authorship.”
Edith bit into a pear tart, and oh ye dancing muses of Epicurus, the taste was divine.The crust was a buttery marvel of perfectly cooked pastry, the pears redolent of some elegant vintage sacrificed in the name of a perfect reduction, and the spices both subtle and complex.
“I am in love,” she murmured.Perhaps poverty made the palate more discerning, perhaps she had never had a proper pear tart before.“I am in love with this recipe.I’d like to publish it, but first I’d like to eat the rest of that basket of tarts, slowly, one at a time, in complete silence.”
Emory regarded her, a half-eaten tart in his hand.“They are good.”
“They are incomparably delectable.”She took another nibble, and the first was as ambrosial as the second.
The duke watched her enjoying her sweet, his expression thoughtful.“If I promised you an endless supply of these pear tarts would you agree to help me find the author of the dratted book?”
Edith spoke without thinking.“If you agreed to supply me with pear tarts like these, I’d promise you nearly anything.”
His smile reignited, blazing from naughty to a degree of wicked merriment that rivaled the pear tart for its scrumptiousness.“You’d promise meanything, my lady?Anything at all?”
“I have done something daring,”Antigone whispered.
Jeremiah was trapped in the family parlor with the ladies, a penance that had befallen him because of the rain.No riding out this afternoon, no carriage parade, no pleasant stroll over to Mrs.Bellassai’s establishment, not that he was welcome there again—yet.
“You have doubtless done something foolish,” Jeremiah said.“Tell Cousin Jere your sins, and I’ll do what I can to sort them out.”
“I made a list,” Antigone said, “of every silly prank I ever got up to.”
“A long list indeed.”Uncle Frederick was at the piano, twiddling away at Mozart.The music provided privacy for Antigone’s confidences, and kept Uncle from descending into the usual litany of his own youthful follies.
“My list is interesting, not merely lengthy,” Antigone said, scooting closer.“How many young ladies of good breeding have knotted their sheets into a rope and escaped the manor house to dance at midnight under a summer moon?”
In Jeremiah’s estimation, that stunt was probably a rite of passage, akin to a youth’s first experience of drunkenness.“But did you climb the rope back up to your bedroom undetected?”
Antigone glowered at him over her embroidery hoop.“Of course not.What do you take me for?I came in through the scullery as any sensible woman would.”
“And perhaps at some point, you stole a bottle of wine from the pantry of your finishing school, and you and your five closest friends grew tipsy on one glass each?”
The glower became a frown.“We took to stealing a bottle every Saturday night.Cook went into the village to see her sister, and we knew where the pantry keys were.Nobody ever said anything, so we concluded the wine wasn’t inventoried.”
