Page 4 of Private Arrangements
He suddenly leaned toward her and placed an index finger over her lips. “I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you. You will not enjoy eating those words.”
She jerked her head away, her lips burning. “I would not want you to remain in my bed if you were the last man alive and I'd had nothing but Spanish flies for a fortnight.”
“What images you bring to mind, my lady Tremaine. With every man in the world perfectly alive and no aphrodisiacs at all, you were already a tigress.” He pushed away from the desk. “I've had all I can take of you for a day. I wish you a pleasant evening. Do convey my regards to your beloved. I hope he doesn't mind my exercises in conjugal rights.”
He left without a backward glance.
And not for the first time.
Lady Tremaine watched the door closing behind her husband and rued the day she first learned of his existence.
Chapter Two
Eleven years earlier . . .
London
July 1882
Eighteen-year-old Gigi Rowland gloated. She hoped she wasn't too obvious, but then, she didn't really care. What could the bejeweled, beplumed women in Lady Beckwith's drawing room possibly say? That she lacked becoming modesty? That she was hard-edged and arrogant? That she reeked of pound notes?
They had predicted, at the beginning of her London season, that she would be an unqualified disaster, a girl with no class, no comportment, no clue. But lo and behold, only two months into the season and she was already engaged—to aduke,a young, handsome one no less.Her Grace the Duchess of Fairford.She liked the sound of it. She liked it tremendously.
The same women who had scorned her had been forced to stand before her and offer their felicitations. Yes, the wedding date had been set—in November, just after her birthday. And, yes, thank you, she already had her first consultation at Madame Elise's for the wedding gown. She'd chosen a lush cream satin, with a twelve-foot train to be made of silver moiré.
Secure in her soon-to-be exalted status, Gigi settled deeper into the bergère chair and snapped open her fan as other, fiancéless debutantes prepared to entertain the ladies with their musical skills—Lord Beckwith being notoriously lengthy with his postdinner cordials and cigars, sometimes keeping the gentlemen for more than three hours.
Gigi turned her attention to more important matters. Should she do something fantastical with the cake, have it done in the shape of the Taj Mahal or the Doge's Palace? No? Then she'd have the layers made in an unusual shape. Hexagons? Excellent. A hexagonal cake covered in gleaming royal fondant icing, with garlands of—
The music. She looked up in surprise. The performances usually ranged from acceptable to execrable. But the creamy, exquisite young woman at the bench was as adept as the professional musicians Gigi's mother sometimes engaged. Her fingers glided across the piano keys like swallows over a summer pond. Crystalline, sumptuous notes caressed the ears the way a good dish of crème brûlée caressed the tongue.
Theodora von Schweppenburg. That was her name. They'd been introduced just before dinner. She was new to London, from a minor principality on the Continent, the daughter of a count, by right a countess herself—but it was one of those Holy Roman Empire titles that went on to all descendants, so it meant little.
The performance ended, and a few minutes later Gigi was surprised to find Miss von Schweppenburg at her side.
“Many congratulations on your engagement, Miss Rowland.” Miss von Schweppenburg spoke with a light, pleasing accent. She smelled of attar of rose underpinned with patchouli.
“Thank you,Fräulein.”
“My mother would like me to do the same,” Miss von Schweppenburg said with a small, self-conscious laugh, sitting down on a straight-back chair next to Gigi. “She has ordered me to ask you how you accomplished it.”
“It is simple,” Gigi answered, with practiced nonchalance. “His Grace is in financial straits, and I have a fortune.”
It was less simple than that. Rather, it had been a campaign years in the making, waged from the very second Mrs. Rowland at last inculcated in Gigi that it was both her duty and her destiny to become a duchess.
Miss von Schweppenburg would not be able to duplicate Gigi's success. Nor would Gigi herself. She knew of no other marriageable duke with such overwhelming arrears that he'd be willing to marry a girl whose only claim to gentility was her mother, a country squire's daughter.
Miss von Schweppenburg's eyes lowered. “Oh,” she murmured, turning the handle of her lace fan round and round within her palms. “I don't have a fortune.”
Gigi had guessed as much. There was a sadness to her, the somber melancholy of a high-born woman who could only afford to have a parlor maid come in every other day, who moved in the dark after sunset to save on candle wax.
“But you are beautiful,” Gigi pointed out. Though long in the tooth, she thought, at least twenty-one or twenty-two. “Men like beautiful women.”
“I don't do it very well, this . . . beautiful woman undertaking.”
That, Gigi had seen for herself already. At dinner Miss von Schweppenburg had been seated between two eligible young peers, both of whom had been piqued by her beauty and her shyness. But there'd been something glum about her reticence. She'd paid scant attention to either man and, after a while, they'd noticed.
“You need more practice,” said Gigi.
