Page 30 of Ne'er Duke Well
She had, of course, some sense of his appeal. She had sat across from him at Rowland House more than once and had forced herself not to look too hard as he smiled and spoke easily of New Orleans. Once, when she and Faiza had encountered Peter and Clermont at the opera, she’d had to bite her cheek tokeep from laughing aloud as Peter caught her elbow and drew her behind a screen while Faiza and Clermont argued.
“If I throw my glove at Clermont,” he’d whispered, grinning down at her, “will it distract them, do you think? Because right now they’re drowning out the soprano.”
She’d noticed the way he had of focusing on her, his eyes bright, his expression suddenly serious—as though he was listening intently to what she had to say. As though it mattered.
She’d simply never seen him deploy the expression on someone else.
It didn’t rankle. It didn’t. She wasgladhe was so bloody charming.
Funny howgladfelt like a sting in her chest.
She set her jaw and turned to look for Iris Duggleby. She still meant to present Peter with options for his future wife, after all. Even if he didn’t seem to need her help nearly as much as she’d thought.
She found Iris in a chair on the side of the ballroom, an abandoned champagne glass at her side and her dark head bent over a book. Iris’s mother, Lady Duggleby, was Italian, and Iris had inherited her thick, glossy black hair. Selina felt quite confident that the twists and ringlets into which Iris’s hair had been tortured—along with the flounced pink satin gown Iris wore—were also the products of Lady Duggleby’s influence.
She took the chair beside her friend. “Iris. I’ve missed you.”
“Hmm?” Iris appeared engrossed in her reading, and Selina felt her lips tug into a smile. After an extended pause, Iris looked up, and her expression came into focus. “Oh, Selina! Have you read this?”
Selina looked down at the book in Iris’s lap and promptly froze, mouth half open.
It was a Belvoir’s book.
She had expected a treatise on archaeological practices or perhaps something in a language she did not recognize. She had absolutelynotexpected—
“Is that,” she choked out, “a, er—”
Iris nodded cheerfully at the book. “A phallus. With a bow on it. Yes.”
Selina looked around the ballroom, then tried to pretend she had not done so.Do not look guilty, she told herself.Don’t you dare.
She reached over and flipped the book in Iris’s lap closed. “Fascinating,” she said on a wheeze.
“Isn’t it? My lady’s maid left this in my bedroom. I thought it was some kind of hint, but perhaps she just forgot it. I really did not know what a French letter was until this evening. Nor that one must tie it on with a ribbon like that.”
“Indeed,” Selina managed.
She recalled that book quite clearly. It was a guide to various forms of contraception, and she had been so pleased with it that she’d made Jean Laventille send it into a second printing. That was precisely the kind of text she wanted for the Venus catalog—a clear, lucid, scientific discussion of how to prevent pregnancy, with diagrams and even suggestions for where to purchase the various products therein.
She had not supposed she would encounter it in a ballroom, in the lap of Iris Duggleby.
But then again, this was exactly what she wanted Belvoir’s to be: an attainable resource for women who would not otherwise have access to knowledge that could change their lives for the better.
The flush on her cheeks was not all guilt, she supposed. Some of it was pride.
Iris was drumming her fingers on the cover of the book and looking abstracted. “Do you know,” she said, “this makes me wonder if we’ve misinterpreted some of the findings from Clarke’s excavation last year. Something in these illustrations struck me as familiar…” She made to reopen the book, and Selina clapped her hand atop Iris’s in alarm.
“Perhaps,” she said weakly, “you might examine the illustrations at home?”
Iris looked down at their hands on the book. “Ah. Perhaps you are right.”
Cautiously, Selina withdrew her fingers. When Iris did not immediately move to turn the cover, Selina gave an inward sigh of relief. “Listen, Iris,” she said, “I wanted to speak to you about something. Aboutsomeone, I should say. Have you met the Duke of Stanhope?”
Iris tapped the green-bound book meditatively before responding. “The American duke? Of course I have. My mother seems to think he might be persuaded to accept me, given that he missed the Puggleby debacle of 1812.”
“Oh,” Selina said. That was good, she supposed, that Iris had already considered marriage to Peter.
Really, it seemed as thougheveryonewould consider marriage to Peter. Which was what she wanted. Of course.
