My Last Duchess, стр. 3
“Glacé cherries,” Maddie said, looking somewhat more cheerful. “When I’m particularly irritated, I bring to mind the way theybounced off his fat head like little tomatoes.”
“Well, after that no one could believe that you maintain cordial relations in the bedchamber. Not when you were screamingabout—”
“No need to go into the details,” Maddie said hastily. “It’s not as if you don’t have a temper yourself.”
“I’m trying to change,” Ophelia said.
Her cousin snorted.
“How is your snorting different from his breaking wind?” Ophelia inquired.
“You’re not listening to me, Phee!” Maddie cried. “My point is that you are lucky because you needn’t deal with a man everagain. You don’t have to hear snoring, or a lecture about what asparagus does to his digestive system, or be smirked at byhis mistress—who happens to be wearing diamond earrings tonight, by the way!”
“As are you,” Ophelia observed.
“Exactly the same earrings,” Maddie said. “I like your emeralds much better than my diamonds, which my husband apparentlybought in bulk.” She cocked her head. “In fact, you’re more attractive than when you debuted, Phee. I expect it’s motherhood.Those curves mean that your chin doesn’t look as pointed as it used to.”
Ophelia broke into laughter and gave her cousin a hug. “What you’re saying is that my witchy chin is now topping a fat figure?”
“Voluptuous is not fat,” Maddie protested, wiggling out of Ophelia’s arms. “How is my goddaughter, by the way?”
“Oh, Viola’s fine. She’s turned two years old, so her favorite word is ‘no.’”
“She’s your daughter,” Maddie pointed out. “What did you expect? Do tell me that you’ve managed to find a good nanny?”
“Not yet,” Ophelia said.
“I’ll find you one,” her cousin promised.
Ophelia didn’t want a nanny, if the truth be known. Kind people kept recommending nannies: stern, kindly, scholarly, playful . . .So far, she’d managed to find something wrong with each of them.
Peter had died a few weeks before Viola was born, so he’d never met his daughter. In his absence, she and Viola had becomeas thick as thieves, as her mother put it. If Ophelia hired a nanny, that nanny would know everything about caring for a two-year-oldgirl. She would know better than Ophelia.
There was an excellent possibility that Ophelia was making all sorts of mistakes that a proper nanny would avoid. She hadnursed Viola herself rather than hire a wet nurse, for example, which one matron had told her was certain to lead to an unhealthyrelationship with her child.
She had enjoyed every moment of that mistake.
Next to her, Maddie let out a little shriek. “Oh, look! I didn’t know he was coming. I haven’t seen the duke in London for a year . . . No, well over a year.” She turned to Ophelia. “Remember whatI told you? There’s only one man in the world who could change my mind.”
“About what?” Ophelia asked absently. Perhaps she would take Viola to the park tomorrow. Her townhouse was only a block fromHyde Park, and Viola loved to visit the duck pond.
But her coachman had said he smelled a winter storm. Bisquet was a country man, and she trusted his nose, even though theonly thing she could smell in London was coal smoke.
“You never remember anything I say,” Maddie complained. “You’re as bad as my husband, but you’re my only cousin, and you oughtto be more attentive.”
“I’m sorry,” Ophelia said. “What did you tell me?”
“That I plan never to bed a man again in the whole of my life.”
Ophelia nodded. “All right.”
“Aren’t you going to dissuade me?” Maddie opened her pretty blue eyes very wide.
“Why would I? Childbirth is extremely dangerous.”
“My husband has two mistresses,” Maddie said, “so it stands to reason that I should take a lover. Or three.”
“That seems excessive to me.”
“There is one man in London who might change my mind—and it isn’t my husband; I can promise you that.”
“It would be hard to have an affaire with one’s own husband,” Ophelia pointed out.
“I would give my virtue to only one man,” Maddie said, showing her fine flair for drama. She nodded toward the other sideof the chamber. “That duke.”
Ophelia couldn’t think of a single duke with whom she would want to share more than a minuet, but she was reconciled to herown shortcomings. The rest of the world experienced fiery passion, but she didn’t. Thankfully, she and Peter had been alikein that.
“I would probably follow him to Paris after a mere nod,” Maddie said dreamily.
“Which duke?” Ophelia asked, but Maddie didn’t hear because she was gawking across the room like a pig herder seeing St. Paul’sfor the first time. Ophelia snapped shut her fan, thinking that she probably shouldn’t compare a beddable duke to a cathedral.It seemed vaguely blasphemous.
Maddie blinked and came out of her desirous haze. “Are you going to the retiring room? I shall join you. I didn’t see thatdarling bag earlier. Oh! It matches your gloves!”
Ophelia smiled. Both her gloves and bag were made of thin, butter-soft leather, sewn with small spangles. The gloves glitteredabove her wrists, and her bag sparkled from every angle as it moved with her. “Thank you! A gift from my mother-in-law.”
“You’re so lucky,” Maddie began, and broke off the sentence. “He’s just over there!”
“Who?” Ophelia turned her head, but all she saw was a ballroom crowded with people she’d known her entire life.
“The Duke of Lindow, of course,” Maddie said triumphantly, plucking Ophelia’s sleeve and nodding toward the door. “Tell meyou wouldn’t have an affaire with him.”
Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “I’ve heard of him, but we’ve never met.” She didn’t bother to look again, because she had no interestin that particular duke, given his unsavory reputation.
Not that it was his fault that his wife ran away with a Prussian.
Maddie was on her toes, peeking over the crowd. “He’s just so beautiful,” she breathed. “It’s cruel what happened to him.”
“Darling, I’m not going to the retiring room; I’m going to leave,” Ophelia said, making up her mind. “Otherwise I’ll be trappedin the supper dance and I shan’t