“I’d be delighted!”

“Well, Roberta, I shall just enumerate my faults, shall I? And let me be quite clear that if you feel unable to stay with me, I have any number of relatives who will bring you out with all the appropriate rites and ceremonies. In fact, it’s quite possible that you should do that. I’m not at all certain that young, unmarried girls are supposed to be living in houses featuring centerpieces akin to what Caro designs.”

“Perhaps not the completely naked ones,” Roberta admitted. “But there is a certain educational value, as your brother noted.”

Jemma gave a delightful chortle of laughter. “Who knew that it would take so much gold paint to cover one chest?”

“Exactly!”

“I am just realizing that you managed Caro as beautifully as you deflected my annoyance over my husband’s dictates. I suppose you are used to people of artistic temperament?”

“Life with my father was—has been—”

Very kindly Jemma cut in. “I can guess,” she said. “Living in France for years, I was often behind the times with English gossip, but your father’s escapades are always in circulation.” Her smile was so cheerfully nonjudgmental that Roberta found herself smiling back. “So, do tell me, did you feel faint when you saw my centerpiece?”

“Not in the slightest,” Roberta assured her. She added, unable to resist, “But perhaps I shall once you enumerate all your faults.”

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” Jemma said.

Roberta raised an eyebrow.

“Well, let’s see. For one thing, I’m a duchess.”

Chapter 3

“A duchess!” Whatever Roberta had been expecting in the way of Jemma’s faults, this wasn’t one of them. “What’s wrong with that? I have always believed it is a—a consummation devoutly to be wished.” And given that she herself had every intention of being Duchess of Villiers, come hell or high water, she really meant it.

The door opened and the stout butler, his face returned to a normal hue, entered with a silver tea tray. “Oh thank you, Fowle,” Jemma said. “That is so kind of you.” After a moment of fiddling with the tray, he left. Jemma poured tea very carefully into fragile tea cups and asked, “Were you quoting poetry just now?”

“Yes, although I couldn’t tell you who wrote it. My father says the phrase frequently and it stuck in my head.”

“Have you had much to do with duchesses?” Jemma didn’t seem to mean that question unkindly; she was fussing with the sugar bowl.

Roberta glanced down at her badly sewn skirt. “No, I have not.”

“Well, I assure you that we are an abominable sort. The very title gives us license to make the worst of ourselves, and we so frequently do.”

“Really?” Roberta accepted a steaming cup of hot tea.

“I have several duchesses among my acquaintances; in fact, we have formed something of a friendship based on the title itself. You see, to be a duchess means that every person you meet will fawn, if he does not positively grovel.”

“Ah,” Roberta said, wondering if this was a veiled way of pointing out that she had not groveled appropriately.

“It is beyond tedious. It makes one stupid.”

“I believe,” Roberta said, “I would hazard the loss of my intelligence. And I am fairly certain,” she said, putting down her cup, “that a small amount of fawning would be a pleasant antidote to Mrs. Grope’s opinions.”

“Dear me, Mrs. Grope does seem to enter your conversation with some regularity,” Jemma said. “Who is she?”

Roberta hesitated and then prevaricated. “I have had a limited circle of acquaintances in the past few years, and I would love to excise her from my mind.”

“And I am dithering on about duchesses. Therein another of my faults: I am incurably shallow. Truthfully, Roberta, my duchess friends are quite like myself.”

“And that is so terrible?” Roberta was happily conscious that Jemma seemed almost a friend already—which surely implied that she, Roberta, was natural duchess material.

“Shallow. Fickle when it comes to men—and you should take that in the worst possible light. This is not a household in which I can imagine a gently reared vicar’s daughter being comfortable. We are desperate in our affections and even more so in our general dislike for our husbands. Well, those of us who have husbands.”

“What happened to the dukes?”

“Oh, the usual sort of things,” Jemma said with a shrug. “Beaumont and I separated years ago, as you must know. My friend Harriet will pay me a visit today; her husband died two years ago, so she’s a widow. I have one friend, Poppy, who is so new to the duchess-business that she is barely wet behind the ears; she’s married to the Duke of Fletcher. Of all of us, I’d say Poppy is our only hope for a happy marital relationship, but she’s going about that all the wrong way. And then finally there’s my friend Isidore. She doesn’t quite count as a duchess, since she hasn’t married her duke yet. They’ve been engaged since birth, and she lives with his mother so if he ever returns from the Orient, or wherever he is, she’ll take the title along with the man.”

“Since I am not a duchess,” Roberta offered, “are you quite certain that you wish my company at all? Your acquaintances sound rarefied in the extreme.”

Jemma opened up her mouth to reply but the door opened and Fowle appeared. “Your Grace,” he said, “His Grace begs the kindness of a moment of your—”

Belying the courtesy of the butler’s request, the duke’s voice rose in the near distance, his words muffled but his fury clear.

Jemma put down her teacup. “I always forget how much I loathe living with a man,” she told Roberta. “Please do stay here comfortably with your cup of tea, while I reacquaint myself with the pleasures of marital strife.”

“Oh dear!” Roberta exclaimed, coming to her feet.

Jemma paused for a moment, obviously taking in the details of Roberta’s costume for the first time. “Tell me that your Mrs. Grope is a seamstress and you have my everlasting sympathy.”

Roberta felt herself turning pink. “No.”

“We shall clothe you,” Jemma said severely. “Though it pains me to say it, I would believe half the eccentricities ascribed to your father merely by examining your gown.” She was at the door before Roberta could answer. But what could she say? She too thought that Mrs. Parthnell had made a mistake by pairing a bodice of melon-colored stuff with a burgundy silk skirt.

A gently bred young lady would stay in the sitting room and ignore the fracas. Roberta headed directly after the duchess.

The duke was standing in the marble entry, looking remarkably like the illustrations depicting his impassioned speeches to the House of Lords.

“He should go to the country,” the duke roared. “Where he can be apprenticed to learn a decent trade.”

“The child certainly will not go to the country,” Jemma announced. “That is, unless Damon wishes him to do so.”

Roberta blinked. Who could the child in question be? Given that Jemma explicitly announced her mandate to produce an heir, it could hardly be hers.