Page 73 of How to Ruin a Duke
A notion worth supporting.“We must not trade on your expectations, Foster.The theater committee can change their minds.”
He took her by the wrist and led her to the front door.“Indeed, they can, in which case, they have to buy out the balance of my contract.I haven’t watched you haggle with everybody from the coal man to the fishmonger for no purpose, Edie.They are stuck with me, and I have so many ideas for new productions that tossing three at the Maloney each year will be the work of a few afternoons.”
Edith donned her pink cloak, though the garment was on the heavy side for the day’s weather.
“You need a new bonnet.Let’s start there, shall we?”Foster plunked her hat onto her head.“Let me buy you a new bonnet, at least, to celebrate the great day.”
“How about a new cloak instead?”Edith said.“We can stop by the milliners and find some new flowers for this bonnet, but a new cloak would be much appreciated.”
“You wear blue quite well, though lavender is also quite pretty on you.”He opened the door and bowed her through, the gesture automatic with him.
Edith stopped on the threshold and wrapped him in a hug, and bedamned to any neighbor shocked by such a display of sibling affection.“I do love you, Foster.You are the best of brothers, and I am so proud of you I could take out a notice in theTimes.”
“That tears it,” he said, giving her a squeeze.“We look at this new house, buy you a new cloak, and then we stop for ices at Gunter’s.”
Inspired by his great good spirits, Edith found a smile.“Never let it be said I declined an invitation to Gunter’s, much less a new cloak.”
They moved down the steps arm in arm, though even the afternoon sunshine was an affront to Edith’s mood.Why had Emory turned up so distant on her, and if he ever did come around again—bearing sandwiches and professing to want her opinion on his troubles—would she even open the door to him?
“What color cloak would you like?”Foster asked.“Perhaps we should buy you two, or better still, two cloaks and a new shawl or three.”
What a dear, darling brother he was.“One cloak, and any color so long as it isn’t pink.”
“What the hellis wrong with me, that I can miss a woman who’d betray my trust and the trust of my family to such an execrable degree?”Thaddeus asked, while in the square around him, children threw sticks for gamboling puppies and couples flirted on benches.
Why must London in springtime be so dreadfully jolly?
Thaddeus had parted from Lady Edith a week ago, and with each passing day, he told himself to have a blunt discussion with his mother, and then an even more direct conversation with her ladyship.And yet, day followed day, and Thaddeus’s mood grew only more bleak as he did exactly nothing about a most bothersome situation.
“Maybe nothing’s wrong with you,” Elsmore said, tipping his hat to a nursery maid pushing a perambulator.“Maybe your conclusions are what’s in error.”
Thaddeus had kept to himself the intimate details of his last encounter with Lady Edith, but he’d told Elsmore the rest of the tale: Her ladyship was writing the sequel toHow to Ruin a Duke, which all but proved she’d written the first volume.
Or did it?
“I know what I saw, Elsmore.I saw yet another manuscript bruiting about the follies and foibles of the Duke of Amorous, and written in her hand.She wrote enough letters and invitations for Mama that I recognized her penmanship.”
And heaven help him, that was another fact that weighed in favor of the lady’s guilt: Every jot and tittle of gossip that Mama had been privy to by virtue of correspondence had doubtless passed before Lady Edith’s eyes.
“You don’t want her to be the guilty party,” Elsmore said, touching his hat brim to a pair of giggling shop girls.“You are an eminently logical man.Some evidence must be contradicting your own conclusion.”
“Must you flirt with every female and infant you pass, Elsmore?”
“I enjoy the company of females and infants.Right now, I don’t much enjoy your company, old man.Here’s a suggestion: Knock on Lady Edith’s door.Rap, rap.”He gestured in the air with a gloved fist.“Put the question to her: Are you writing the next installment of my ruin, or did I misconstrue the situation when I ever-so-rudely read your work without your permission?”
“She left it in plain sight.”
“And….?”
“And that is not the behavior of a guilty woman.”That conclusion bothered Thaddeus, because it gave him hope.He did not want to have hope, he wanted to have the whole situation behind him.
Mostly.“She also said she wanted to discuss the project with me.She was doubtless dissembling.”
“You saw evidence of three other projects in progress?Some poetry scribbled in draft?An epistolary adventure featuring a plucky governess, a leering viscount, and a runaway carriage or two?Maybe she’s working on a biography of King George?”
“I saw only the one work, but I didn’t exactly rifle her drawers.”
Elsmore twirled his walking stick.“Because I am your friend, and because the current arrangement of my features has become dear to my mother and sisters, I will not comment on that statement.”
