Page 83 of A Scandalous Kind of Duke

“It is nearly the end of the Season and still society hardly knows I exist,” Beatrice said.

“Your garden party was well attended,” Juno pointed out. “And you said you have had an excellent response for your ball next week.”

“Yes, but none of my guests are peers!” she wailed. “I thought the duke’s attendance at my party might make them notice me, but still they ignore my invitations.”

“Aristocrats are just ordinary people too,” Juno said.

“Ordinary!What are you saying? They are not ordinary people. They are the best people! If only they would acknowledge me. I might be nothing more than the daughter of a squire, but that would prove to everyone that I have a right to be here too. I know more about art than most of the clowns at the Royal Academy, though when I do venture an opinion or offer a fact, they immediately assume I am repeating Prescott’s views.”

She hooked her fingers around Juno’s elbow and dragged her on to the next painting, grumbling all the while. “Mr. Prescott does deals with these fine lords, but only in their clubs. I suppose they never tell their wives—because why would a man bother to tell his wife anything?—so the peeresses do not even know I exist.”

Juno abandoned all hope of studying the art. Just as well, for here was a painting of a slender, elegantly dressed gentleman, brandishing flowers for his blushing, dark-eyed love.

She looked away.

“What if Mr. Prescott were to show some paintings, at a dinner party perhaps?” she suggested. “Everyone would be sure to attend. It is something of a peculiarity with your husband, the way he has such a marvelous collection but refuses to share.”

Beatrice sighed. “We had such a wonderful time when we first married, when he took me to Europe and showed me the art galleries and private collections. I loved learning. People think I’m silly, because I talk too much, but he saw my talent and he liked my enthusiasm. But now he says I should concentrate on passing my knowledge on to our children. The pair of them are not yet five! I thought he enjoyed tutoring me, but now I fear he might tutor some other young lady, if you grasp my meaning. If only I could triumph in society, at least I’d have that. But to fail as a wife, to fail as a patroness of the arts, to fail as…”

She stared glumly at the next painting: One powerfully built Titan was beheading another, while a crowd of demons cheered. Perhaps Beatrice, too, enjoyed beheadings, for barely a heartbeat later, she was grinning at Juno again.

“You know what will cheer me up? A new project. I shall get you married.”

“Because misery loves company?” Juno asked dryly, and added, as she always did, “I have art. I have no interest in marriage.”

A voice inside whispered:Why not? Why not?

Beatrice waved that away. “One can be both married and an artist. What about Mr. Adair, the frame maker? His business is thriving, and when he rolls up his shirt sleeves, well, let me say I quite enjoy the sight. Don’t tell Mr. Prescott, will you?”

The very idea Juno might tell Mr. Prescott that his wife was admiring the frame maker’s forearms!

They were lovely forearms, though.

“An excellent idea,” Juno agreed solemnly. “Frames are expensive and marrying him would give me a lifetime’s supply for free.”

She moved on aimlessly, navigating through the chattering crowd. The hall was hot and stuffy, and her head was starting to ache. She would come back when it was quieter and she could study the art in peace.

Beatrice was still at her side. “You will be twenty-eight at your next birthday. Time’s running out.”

Twenty-eight. Hardly decrepit, but an old maid nonetheless. And what of it?Shedidn’t care.

If I cannot have Leo, I shall have no one,she had written. Well, she could not have Leo, and here she was with no one.

She had received exactly what she’d wished for.

“I suppose I am yet to meet a man for whom I would turn my life upside down,” she said.

Beatrice waggled a scolding finger. “One of these days, some man will sweep you off your feet like a gale.”

Juno wasn’t sure she wanted to be swept away by a love like a howling wind. She preferred love like a sunrise, gently creeping up through the darkness of one’s solitude, brightening one’s life with an array of colors, rising, spreading, growing in light and warmth until it filled her whole world, and watched over her all her life.

* * *

Mercifully,Beatrice did not persist. “Oh look!” she cried. “We’ve reached the main painting by Señor de Goya!” She whipped out her quizzing glass to examine the famous art.

Which meant she didn’t notice that Juno had gone very still and was staring across the gallery.

Right at Leopold Halton, the Duke of Dammerton.

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