The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series (31 page)

Inside the busy arcade Charlotte took Sarah by the hand and did her best to politely squeeze a place for them at each counter. But one customer refused to budge as Sarah pressed impatiently between her and the maid standing at her side.

“Do you mind?” the woman said to Sarah, half turning to reprimand her. “Children should not be brought on—”

She looked up at Charlotte’s face; for a moment her eyes flashed in open hostility, and Charlotte would have delivered a few choice words, but she would not condescend to low behavior with her daughter present.

“Your Grace!” Lady Clipstone cried in faux surprise. “How wonderful to see you, and, oh, is this the little lady?” she asked, reaching to pat Sarah on the head.

Sarah drew back against Charlotte with the arrogant scowl she had obviously inherited from her father along with his wicked nature.

“Yes, it is,” Charlotte said with a smile so forced it could have cracked her face. “Isn’t she a cherub?” She poked Sarah in the arm. “This is Lady Clipstone, dear. She’s one of my cousin’s
oldest
friends. Give her a smile, Sarah.”

Sarah glanced up at Lady Clipstone. Then she glanced back to Charlotte. “I do not want to smile at her. You cannot make me.”

“No, sweet, I can’t. But I can tighten the purse strings if you persist.”

Sarah folded her arms across her chest.

“It’s fine,” Lady Clipstone said quickly. “She is so
young
to be shopping, and after all the
excitement
in your lives. How exhausting the past weeks have been for your family. Oh—did I forget to offer my congratulations?”

Sarah stuck her tongue out at Alice. Charlotte gasped in dismay. Lady Clipstone stepped back into her maid. “What an
amusing
child.”

“Isn’t she? I might have to resort to blackmail to influence her behavior.”

“Blackmail?” Sarah said, interest kindling in her eyes.

Lady Clipstone’s face turned pallid. Charlotte felt tempted to ask at the counter for a restorative before the other woman fainted. But Sir Godfrey had taken note of the two ladies; he summoned the clerk to clear the other customers to another display so that he could personally attend Charlotte’s silent call for assistance.

“Your Grace,” he said with a bow, “how may I be of service?”

“I would like to look at your diaries,” Sarah piped in, granting him a gracious smile.

“Indeed, my lady.” He looked up at Charlotte and, almost as an afterthought, at Alice. “What a privilege, I must say, that my humble wares will become part of another legacy.”

Lady Clipstone had recovered her color and, it appeared, also her resentment. “You will excuse me,” she said in a disgruntled voice. “I have other matters to attend to.”

Charlotte drew Sarah back to open a path. “Oh, before I forget—have you heard that Emma is here in London? Perhaps you can meet her for tea and revisit your friendship.”

H
arriet had gone to St. Giles to visit Nick’s mother, who, as she expected, looked ill but not ready to give up the ghost. She informed Harriet that Millie was pregnant, and Harriet had paid her a visit, too, encouraging her to stay off the streets now that she soon would have the responsibility of a child. And after she left, she found herself pondering whether to allow her husband to leave off the French letters so that they could start a family.

Which might never happen if she didn’t escape this traffic to prepare for his homecoming at the end of the week. The carriage had broken away from the fetid stews where Harriet had once lived when it came to a complete halt. She tapped her toe and waited. After spending the day in dank surroundings, she wanted to go home, have a wash, and change her gown.

She toyed with a strand of her unruly red hair. She closed her eyes and began to count to a thousand. At
three hundred and thirteen she opened the window and leaned outside to ask the coachman or one of the footmen to investigate the cause of the obstruction.

But the coachman didn’t respond. He had apparently dozed off, his chin against his chest, his arms folded across his stomach like a shelf. For all practical purposes he was dead to the world.

Harriet sighed in exasperation, staring at the sheep passing by without a shepherd in sight.

And what had happened to the footmen?

Ah, there they were—standing like a pair of bookends against a silversmith’s shop front. Several pedestrians and street vendors had squeezed between them for a look-see at the commotion that appeared to have broken out at the corner.

Perhaps there had been an accident. Perhaps a gig had collided with a coal wagon. Or a hackney coachman refused to budge until his passenger had paid his fare.

Harriet would have called the footmen back to their posts, but she doubted she could make herself heard over the laughing, the bleating, the shouting—

The shouting.

She stretched up from her seat to the window again and craned her neck to see above the crowd.

That shouting had a familiar ring.

It sounded like…No, that was impossible.

It couldn’t be.

It sounded as if it were
her
voice, before two years of Emma Boscastle’s intensive elocution lessons. It sounded as if the former unladylike Harriet were making that ungodly racket on the corner and practically inciting a small riot in the street.

She opened the door and descended into the chaos without benefit of folding steps or footmen.

“Hey, madam. Watch the toes, would you kindly?”

“Do you mind not shoving, missus?”

“Take yer turn, lady. Stand in line like the rest of us common folk.”

“Common folk,” she muttered under her breath, giving him a good poke in the ribs. “Move your carcass, would you?”

The man swung around and stared at her, too stunned to protest. Harriet took advantage of his surprise and weaved through the bystanders. In the past Harriet had bemoaned her disgraceful upbringing. But over time, she had come to realize that being a duchess with gutter instincts was more a help than a hindrance.

“What’s the ruckus at the corner?” she asked a flower vendor wearing a fringed red shawl.

The seller looked her over. “I know you.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Yeah. Right. You gotta few pence?”

Harriet reached up and pulled several pearl-headed pins from her hair, which promptly flew about in all directions. Harriet’s willful curls had always been a sore point. Even Charlotte, who rarely spoke an unkind word, had made a comparison between the snakes of Medusa’s head and Harriet’s hair.

She dropped the pins into the basket of flowers. “What’s the to-do?”

“There’s a girl on the corner makin’ a fortune offa some guidebook she got printed on Grub Street.”

A girl.

A guidebook.

Harriet wished she could ignore the tingle of recognition
that stole down her nape. “A guidebook for what? Riches? Eternal life? What has intrigued so many people?”

The vendor dropped her basket and bent, interlacing her fingers to give Harriet a boost. “Might as well see. Good thing you’re light. I think she’s sellin’—”

Harriet gasped, swaying in the unsteady cradle of the flower vendor’s hands.

“What is it?” the vendor asked, nearly pitching Harriet headfirst into the crowd.

“Oh, my God.” Harriet glanced down distractedly at the unreliable footbridge. “I’m going to throttle her. Do you mind holding me a little more securely?”

“Tell me what’s she about,” the vendor said.

Harriet succeeded in snagging one of the broadsheets from another bystander’s hand before she lost her balance. The flower vendor peered over Harriet’s shoulder.

“What’s it say?”

Harriet pushed back the unruly red hair that matched her unruly temperament. “‘The Scarfield Academy’s Guidebook for Young Girls Whose Ambition Is to Marry a Duke.’”

“A duke?” the flower vendor said, staring harder at the sheet in Harriet’s hand. “Really? She don’t look like she could write ’er own name.”

“‘Results guaranteed,’” Harriet said wryly, and strained her eyes to read the cheap print. “How edifying.”

“Well, what’s it say?”

“I can’t read the whole thing.”

“Just the good parts. The ’elpful ones. The parts that’ll make a duke marry
me
.”

Harriet scowled at her and began to read aloud. “‘How did it happen? How did a reserved young schoolmistress
wangle a proposal from the dedicated bachelor the Duke of Wynfield?’”

“How?”

“‘Was it by design or by destiny?’” Harriet snorted, skimming the outrageous piece. “‘How did not one, not two, but
three
schoolmistresses from the Scarfield Academy manage to each marry a devilishly handsome duke? And how can you, dear reader, make your dreams for a similar fate come true? Here are a few snippets to set you on the road to matrimony:

“‘For verification of these claims, please contact the staff at the Scarfield Academy.’” Harriet took a breath. “Oh, Verity Cresswell, I’ll verify you when I get you alone, you little traitor.” Still, part of her felt a reluctant admiration for the girl’s penny-press enterprise. It was something Harriet might have attempted herself in the old days. In fact, she decided she would keep Verity’s
endeavor from Charlotte and Miss Peppertree, or the pair of them would go off like grenades.

“Is there any truth to it?” the flower vendor inquired, her voice hesitant with a wistfulness that Harriet knew would not survive many more years before skepticism set in. Yes. There
was
truth to it. Verity had obviously listened to the other girls gossiping and had turned their talk into a profitable venture. Well, it was better than picking pockets. Indeed, one could even claim that the Scarfield Academy had wielded a positive influence in comparison to the sins of Verity’s past.

Besides, who was she to douse the feeble light of hope in anyone’s heart? Harriet had married her own duke. She folded the broadsheet into a compact rectangle and tucked it into the flower basket between the fresh buds and the wilted blooms. “I think there might be.”

The flower seller gasped in recognition. “I do know who you are.”

Harriet wavered. Why was it that every time she tried to put her past behind her, it jumped into her path like Goliath? “Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “You do know me. I’m Harriet Gardner from St. Giles.”

“What’d you say?” The vendor stumbled back into a cart of secondhand clothes. “And I thought you was the Duchess of Glenmorgan. What right do you ’ave dressing up in that fancy dress and accosting innocent folk like me who’re only tryin’ to do an honest day’s work? I shoulda known a true duchess wouldn’t walk up and strike up a conversation with a workingwoman.”

“But—”

The flower vendor scuttled behind the old-clothes cart. The barrel-chested owner, who’d been ignoring Harriet so far, lifted his fist to her in menace. “You ought
to be ashamed of yourself,” he said with the protective indignation that only a street dweller could rally for another when he was in the mood. “Go peddle your wares elsewhere, madam,” he added, as Harriet turned away, stifling a horrible urge to laugh, if not lament the insult that she had apparently dealt her identity.

“O
h, Daphne.” Charlotte embraced Miss Peppertree’s slight figure, whispering the words that she’d never expected to say in her life. “I shall miss you.”

“Don’t cry,” Daphne reminded her, sniffing as she disengaged herself. “It isn’t dignified for a duchess to show emotion.”

“I’m not quite a duchess in my heart yet.”

“But I am a gentlewoman upon whose slight shoulders will fall the duty of upholding the standards set when this academy was started.”

“I wish I could have convinced you to take my position. We might have disagreed here and there, but I have the highest regard for your character.”

Miss Peppertree shook her head. She didn’t appear to be persuaded by Charlotte’s attempt at flattery. “Rest assured I’ll do everything in my power to maintain the school—everything, that is, except to take the reins.”

“But, Daphne, think of the esteem.”

“Think of the exasperation. Think of the endless months of teaching a girl to value her virtue, only to have it flung out the kitchen window like old tea leaves the minute a handsome duke presents himself at the door.”

“Really. No one in this house has flung her virtue or tea leaves out the window.”

“No? Review the academy’s history. Remember what happened to our foundress, a lady I would have sworn would walk through the flames of the tempter and emerge untouched.”

“But you do recall the unexpected effect of their affair, don’t you?”

“Yes. I had dyspepsia and hives for a month.”

“I meant the effect on the academy.”

“Oh.”

“Enrollment soared afterward. And the same thing happened when the Duke of Glenmorgan brought his niece here to study, and he met Harriet. She left to become his aunt’s companion.”

“I remember,” Miss Peppertree said sourly. “More tea leaves tossed out along with virtue.”

“But you helped me to entice my duke!”

“I helped you to
encourage
him. What choice did I have?”

“Emma has often confessed how perfect you are for the position.”

“You have a formidable young lady anxious to step into your shoes. Besides, the position seems to carry a curse, and calamities come in threes. Our candidate had best be warned that she could be the opening chapter in another trilogy.”

“Listen to you. I thought
I
was the one prone to waxing
fanciful. What if there isn’t a…curse? What if it’s really a blessing in disguise?”