Page 38 of A Duke in Disguise
“Dear Miss Plum, I have these five years been married to a man most would account a most excellent husband. He is neither cruel nor miserly. However, after reading a treatise written by a learned gentleman, he has become a proponent of free love, which he claims is what the Creator must have intended in a perfect a state of nature. He says he wishes to lie with other women, and I am free to do as he does, but I do not wish to dally with other men. It seems I have no say in this and I know not what to do.”
“Dear Miss Plum, My wife has lost two stone and I no longer like the look of her bosoms, please advise.”
In response, Verity wrote a four-page tirade on the merits of spinsterhood, the urgent need to reform divorce law, and the benefits that would devolve to all by banning men from the public sphere. She feared this would not be a suitable answer to either correspondent, nor to their spouses, but she found it moderately cathartic.
She supposed that she ought to be grateful for having work to distract her, but she felt singularly ill-equipped to answer these letters. In fact she could not imagine anyone less suited to advising people on their families, friendships, and attachments than she, who had in the span of a month lost the two people who mattered most to her. The house echoed with an emptiness that felt like failure, a mirror of her own cold heart. When she went to the shop, Nate’s absence was an almost palpable loss.
Ash’s absence, though, was vague and inchoate; she felt his loss not in any particular room but in her entire being. There was nowhere she could go to be rid of the thought of him. He was a part of her, but now he was gone; it was as simple as that. Hard work ought to be the best medicine for this ache, but work was yet another place from which Ash was absent. She did not want to sit at her desk knowing he would never walk into the room. She worked anyway, though, and after a week the sharp sting of loss had mellowed to the dull nagging pain of an old injury.
Ash had neither called on her nor written since he had left the previous week. Based on what she read in the papers, he had been very busy indeed: three days after he left, the newspapers reported that a man purporting to be the Duke of Arundel’s legitimate grandson had brought a suit against his grandfather and uncle for the income of properties associated with the entail and the will of a Talbot ancestor. This, Verity gathered, was the solicitor’s strategy for ensuring that Ash’s identity was settled before the present duke’s imminent death.
Portia called on Verity after the first piece about Ash appeared in the papers. Verity told Nan to send her away: she was in no state for either curiosity or sympathy. The following day’s post brought a letter from Portia; Verity, in a fit of self-pity and feeling entirely unequal to the basic requirements of friendship, threw it into the fire unread. When, a few days later, Portia called once again, Nan put her foot down. The older woman would not send such a fine lady away, and in such foul weather too.
“She can stay in her carriage. I’m sure she has a warm brick at her feet,” Verity said sulkily.
“She was just standing there, her poor bonnet ruined and her cloak soaked straight through. I had to let her in.”
Verity glanced out the window and saw nothing but an expanse of gray. “And now she’s dripping onto my shop floor, I suppose.” She sighed. “Send her up.”
Nan nodded. “I’ll have tea and cakes sent up as well.”
From the moment Verity informed Nan that Mr. Ashby would be seeking lodgings elsewhere, an assortment of cakes and biscuits had begun appearing at all hours. “Broken hearts are best mended with a sweet tooth,” Nan had said, despite Verity insisting that she did not have a broken heart and that this was not even a proper maxim anyway. She ate the sweets nonetheless, and they didn’t make anything worse, at least. Cake had never made anything worse.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Verity said when Portia, sodden and blue lipped, walked into the room.
“Of course you don’t,” Portia said from between chattering teeth. “Did you think I came for gossip? What do you take me for? I came to see if you wanted company.” She peeled off her wet cloak and frowned at her sodden bonnet.
Verity stood in silence for a moment, regarding the woman who was her only friend this side of the Atlantic. “You’d better sit by the fire. I’m behaving churlishly but I warn you I have no intention of stopping.”
“Of course you don’t. When are you going to see him again?” Portia extended one ruined slipper towards the fire.
Verity let out a bitter laugh. “When? Never, if he has his way.”
“Nonsense.” Portia turned sharply towards Verity. “You can’t toss someone from your life after being in one another’s pockets for ten years.”
“Tell that to Ash. He has all manner of high-minded ideas about not sullying my honor with an improper connection.”
“What about a proper connection? I will admit that I don’t expect it to do me any harm to have my close friend become a duchess, so I’m hardly unbiased.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re mad if you think I’d agree to anything of the sort. I’m perfectly content in this house, eating cakes and publishing magazines and dirty books about Perkin Warbeck. I do honest work that I’m very good at. Being a duchess does not sound in the least interesting, even if it weren’t against all of my principles.”
“Perkin Warbeck?” Portia asked, her features almost comically distorted by consternation. “Is he all the rage these days? First Amelia, now you, after having gone a good thirty-five years without ever hearing anyone speak his name aloud.”
“All I know is that I like him more than anyone else in my life at the moment.” Then Verity realized what Portia had just told her. “Do you mean to say Amelia has developed an interest in Perkin Warbeck?” Verity schooled her face into a semblance of mild curiosity.
“All summer and well into the autumn she was knee deep in books about the man. I think she meant to write a biography. I tell you, I despair of the girl.”
“He must be a very fashionable topic,” Verity said faintly. Any other time she might be gratified at possibly identifying her anonymous author, but today she had other concerns. “I do beg your pardon, Portia. I’m taking out all my frustration on you because I haven’t anyone else to be surly to.”
“That’s why I came, you absurd creature. Well, not for you to be rude to me, but because I’m well aware that Ash is your closest friend, and that you’re without support at a time when you need it. Did you think I stood about in the rain for my own amusement?”
Verity shifted, uncomfortable with the idea that Portia had gone out of her way. “You must know it’s going to cause a great deal of scandal. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want your name caught up in scandal so close to Amelia’s debut.”
“This is an emergency.” Portia spoke with such gravity that Verity was momentarily taken aback. When Verity failed to respond, Portia frowned. “I’m not keeping a balance sheet, you know. I’m not writingstood about in rain, jeopardized Amelia’s debutin red ink under your name. There’s no tally of your debts. There aren’t any debts at all. You don’t owe me.”
“I know—”
“I don’t think you do. People help those they care about. That’s a good thing. That’s why you sent Nate away.”
