Love Match (21 page)

Ignoring them both, the duke turned to his companion. “I trust you slept well, Sir Charles.”

“Marvelous well. And you?” Sir Charles bit into a sausage, paused midchew. In light of a recent conversation with his stepdaughter, this question might not be politic. Charnwood looked as if he had not slept at all.

As the duke refrained from comment on his nocturnal habits, the parrot ducked behind the centerpiece for all the world as if it was playing hide-and-seek. Nothing loath, the kitten pounced.

The centerpiece tipped over, spilling fruit everywhere. The kitten chased after an apple. The parrot caught a bunch of grapes in one claw and began to dine. The duke dropped his head into his hands.

The parrot, Sir Charles had already met. “A kitten?” he inquired.

“Its name is Minou. Elizabeth brought it home. My wife is determined to acquire a zoo. We won’t speak of
how
she came by the kitten. Her mama would not approve any more than I do.”

The duchess’s step-papa did not care to discuss her mama. Nor, in point of fact, did he care to discuss the matter that he must. There was nothing top-lofty about Charnwood now. Sir Charles was observing a man who had reached the end of his rope.

He seized the moment. “Since we find ourselves private, I have a crow to pluck with you.”

Justin didn’t know how private they might be in the midst of cats and birds and servants. “Thank you, William, James. We will serve ourselves.” The footmen bowed themselves out of the room. The duke caught the apple, and the kitten, before they tumbled to the floor. “Maybe you might pluck a parrot instead, Sir Charles.”

Sir Charles studied the parrot. Birdie blinked one baleful yellow-rimmed eye, darted out her wicked beak, and snatched a sausage from his plate. He jumped. “By Jove!”

“Unruffle yourself, Birdie. It was but a figure of speech.” The duke plopped the kitten back down on the table. “What was it you wished to speak with me about?”

“It’s not that I
wish
to.” Sir Charles pushed his plate away. “Thing is, maybe I can help you out. Happens to all of us, you know. I’ve made a bit of a study of the matter myself.” He went on to speak knowledgeably about earth chestnut, and wild clary drunk with wine; black ants, deer genitals, raw oysters, and applications of camel fat. By the time Sir Charles had finished this little dissertation, the food had congealed on his plate, Minou had fallen asleep in the sugar pail, and Birdie was perched on the duke’s shoulder and grooming his hair.

“I’ll say no more!” Sir Charles put down his napkin. “Other than that if I fetch Elizabeth home, my wife will ring me
such
a peal. You’ll see how that is, now you’re a tenant for life. Take my advice, and we’ll see matters fixed up all right and tight. Sometimes the ladies require us to make an effort, bless their hearts. Where
are
the ladies, by the by?”

Justin wondered what his own lady had said to prompt her stepfather’s lecture. Perhaps he would feed
her
raw oysters and black ants. “They have gone out. I believe they intended to visit the Baths.”

“Excellent notion!” Sir Charles pushed back his chair. Justin plucked Minou out of the sugar pail and nostalgically recalled his simple bachelor life.

* * * *

Madame de Chavannes, at that same moment, was enjoying a Bath Bun, a sweet rich roll to which raisins, chopped lemon peel, and almond nibs had been added before it was baked. “That was excellent!” she said, and brushed coarse sugar off her gloves. “Onward,
ma chère!
Did you know that during the Dark Ages, Bath was given the name ‘Akesmanceaster,’ which meant ‘sick man’s town’?”

What Augusta knew was that Magda sought to distract her. Her devious companion contrived to send on vital information, but to whom? The Comte de Provence, marooned in exile, or the Due d’Engheim? Bonaparte? The Directoire? And what vital information had she unearthed
here
, the ingredients in a Bath Bun? Gus paused to peruse the window of a woolen merchant. “I’m surprised that Elizabeth didn’t accompany us today.”

Would that Gus had proved equally reclusive! Magda suspected Saint’s cousin would follow her even into the slums of Avon Street.
“Merde alors!
Now you accuse poor Elizabeth of getting up to some intrigue. She probably stayed home to play with her new pet.”

“I should never have let her go off alone with you.” The ladies promenaded briskly along a street of splendid shops, Augusta matching Magda step for step. “Conor Melchers, of all people! What were you thinking? The man is a libertine.”

“Attractive, is he not?” Magda shot her companion a sideways, knowing glance. “Even you are drawn to him. Admit it, Gus.”

Augusta snorted. “I am nothing of the sort. Why are you so set on leading poor Elizabeth astray?”

Magda was relieved to see ahead of them the fretted pinnacles of Bath Abbey, the columned and pedimented colonnades of the Pump Room, the spacious paved courtyard where blue-coated sedan chair attendants awaited customers. “
Mon
Dieu,
you grow protective. I thought you had no fondness for Saint’s new wife, Gus.”

Lady Augusta paused to avoid a passing carriage, then hurried after her companion, who moved along as quickly as if she were engaged in a footrace. Or trying to outdistance someone.

Gus wasn’t about to be outdistanced. “Elizabeth can’t be faulted for her courage. A cat, of all things. And Saint will let her keep it. Saint does not like cats. It is prodigious strange.”

The Baths lay before them. Magda led Gus toward the dark entrance and—since this outing had been her notion, if
not Augusta’s participation in it—paid the admission fees. “Not so strange as all that. Saint is trying to please his wife.”

Augusta followed Magda into the steamy, dungeon-like dressing area, where a female attendant waited to help them into canvas bathing costumes. “Why?” she inquired as she stepped into the stiff petticoat. “He hasn’t tried to please anyone else that I can see. I still cannot decide why Saint married her. She’s not at all in his style. I mean— Look at you!” Difficult not to do so. A large amount of Magda’s person was currently on view.

“It has been a long time since I was to Saint’s liking.” Magda thrust her arms into a brown linen jacket and waved away the bonnet that the attendant sought to put atop her head. “Tastes change, as you might discover for yourself, were you not so determined to be a thorn in your cousin’s side.”

Augusta opened her mouth to protest this calumny; closed it as the attendant plopped the chip hat on her head. “I am
not
a thorn,” she said, when the woman was done with her. “And if I am, it is because there are so many restrictions placed on an unmarried woman that it makes me cross. It is different for you. As a widow you may do as you please.”

The ladies stepped out into the sunlight. On one side of the huge cistern, a colonnaded covering protected the bathers from the weather. Spectators and friends of the bathers lounged along the sides of the bath or on the gallery above. Several women sat in a semicircle near the bar, cup and saucer in either hand, listening to the musicians play. Nearby were chambers in which a patient might immerse the afflicted portion of his body in hot water right out of a pump; and a steaming room where direct injections were administered in the belief that they were of service in violent intestinal complaints. In a recessed niche stood a statue of King Bladud, erected in 1699.

“It is not that the world
permits
me to do as I please,” Magda said, as she plunged a foot into the water, “but that I do it anyway
.
Imagine what this was like in Roman times. The bathing ritual lasted for hours. Everyone from military generals to shopkeepers mingling freely in the waters and conversing, playing games, relaxing. Traders displaying their wares, everything from fresh fruits to fine jewelry.”

Lady Augusta surveyed her fellow bathers. Rheumatics, gout sufferers, people afflicted with rampant eczema and other unsightly skin diseases; fat women, thin women, obese and skinny men, all milling about and splashing each other and having a marvelous good time in the bath. The excessively hot bath, which she was sharing with them. At least they hadn’t brought along their livestock. “I hope the water has been changed since then. It doesn’t smell much better than it tastes. I suppose those little floating copper bowls filled with scented oils and pomades are an attempt to purify the air.” Gus couldn’t help her instinctive distrust of water that sprang out of the earth already boiled for use.

Magda glanced over her shoulder. “The baths are constantly fed by hot water springs that start beneath the earth. But you must avoid the Cross Bath,
ma chère
. They say women become pregnant after bathing there.”

Augusta grimaced. Magda was teasing her again. She returned to the primary source of her annoyance. “Justin is a man, and can do anything he likes. I would give anything to have the freedom of a man.”

Magda would have liked to have her own freedom, especially from Gus. She waded through the crowd. “Olympe de Gouge was a French butcher’s daughter who believed women should have the same rights as men. The National Convention escorted her to the guillotine. On what charge, you ask? Treason,
naturellement.”

Gus wondered if it was treasonous to want control of her life. Justin would believe so, at any rate. She dared not provoke her cousin further, not without some good reason, if she wanted to keep her allowance and a roof over her head, which was why she had thus far, and with a heroic self-control, avoided the gaming clubs.

Men and women were strolling around together in the baths. If in theory the sexes weren’t supposed to mingle, mingle higgledy-piggledy they did, laughing and chatting in water that rose up to their necks. The men wore stiff canvas robes. The ladies’ costumes were amazingly unbecoming. Some women had attached handkerchiefs to their bonnets in an attempt to blot away the perspiration that trickled down her cheeks.

Augusta dabbed at her own forehead. She had said she’d never go into the baths. She should have listened to herself. Amid the rabble—Gus’s social consciousness hadn’t been elevated one whit by the recent troubles in France—she glimpsed a familiar face. “Magda! There is that Frenchman who follows you around.”

Not only was Gus a thorn in her side, Magda reflected, she was also more observant than one might wish. Discreetly, she wriggled her fingers at Gregoire. “
Mais oui!
Many men follow me. You will tell me I might remedy the situation by putting on stays. I do not like stays, and I
do
like the gentlemen, and so— Perhaps you might consider putting off your own corset, Gus.”

Before Lady Augusta could point out that few of the females in the water were wearing stays, including herself, and none had as a result attracted hordes of admiring gentlemen, which may have had something to do with the rigid and comfortable nature of the canvas costumes that they wore, Magda’s émigrés descended upon them, all talking at once. Augusta listened, and thereby learned that Napoleon had tried to level off the graves in a cemetery at Ezbekiya so he could have even ground around his headquarters, but the populace had become so hostile that he was forced to abandon his plan.

If Madame de Chavannes’s various assets were not on public view, due to her stiff costume, she and her admirers still drew no little attention from the crowd. Among those other bathers was Sir Charles Ratchett, who had been waiting so long for the ladies to arrive that he felt like a lobster cooking in the pot. Elizabeth’s step-papa was no stranger—though he had never played it with a parrot—to the game of hide-and-seek. In his mind, the name ‘de Chavannes’ rang a good loud bell. He watched Madame laughing, gay and indolent as if she had no purpose here other than to enjoy the waters. Sir Charles didn’t believe it for a moment. He splashed his way through the throng.

Maybe the lady’s presence
was
a coincidence. More likely, it was not. What remained to be discovered was whether Madame de Chavannes played a role in counterrevolutionary espionage, paid for by the British government; or whether she was one of the secret agents with whom France had flooded the country in an attempt to provoke subversion and inflame invasion fears; or if she might be more innocent than she appeared.

Augusta, who could have cared less that Napoleon’s own ship
L’Orient
had narrowly escaped the fighting at Abukir, was distracting herself from the conversation going on around her with details of the entertainment she had planned. There must be cards at Elizabeth’s soirée
.
The guests would be astonished if there were no cards. Saint would dislike his guests to be astonished, would he not?

A tingle ran down her spine, as if she were the object of someone’s attention. Gus glanced around and saw Sir Charles bearing down on them.

She nudged her companion. “You have another admirer, I think.”

“Mon Dieu! Que difficultle!”
sighed Magda. With admirable dispatch, Gregoire and his fellow émigrés melted away into the throng.

Sir Charles was panting when he reached the ladies. The water was
demned
hot. “By Jove! What a surprise. Where is Elizabeth? Charnwood said she had gone out with you two.”

Augusta would eat her ugly chip straw bonnet if Sir Charles was the least bit surprised to encounter them. How did Magda do it? Yet another conquest, and in this instance without even displaying her enviable décolletage
.
“My cousin was mistaken. Elizabeth went off somewhere with her maid.”

Magda was under no similar misapprehension concerning Sir Charles’s interest. He had recognized her name. Sir Charles Ratchett was part of a group made up from the intelligentsia of many nations, its prime concern to try and influence the political situation with France. Too late, now, to regret she had not chosen one of the other titles in her repertoire.

Where a lesser lady might have shrieked with vexation, however, Magda raised her handkerchief and wiped away the perspiration beaded on his brow. “
Bonjour
, Sir Charles. We were discussing Bath Buns. Raisins, chopped lemon peel, almond nibs, coarse-grained sugar. They are most marvelously delicious. If you have not tasted one, you must.”