“Once,” Alexandra put in. “You let one go, once. But do let’s try to hold a normal conversation, just for a few minutes. Otherwise we’ll frighten Her Grace away.”
“Not at all,” Emma assured her. “I’m happy to be here.” The elegant, imposing ladies would wait for another day. “How did you know to invite me?”
“Oh, it’s a small square. Everyone knows everything. The cook tells the costermonger, who tells the maid down the street . . . so on and so forth.” She handed Emma a cup of tea. “They’re saying you were a seamstress until only last week.”
Oh, dear. Emma deflated. She supposed it was unrealistic to hope she could hide it.
Penny clasped her hands together in her lap. “Tell us everything. How did you meet? Was your courtship terribly romantic?”
“I don’t know that one could call it romantic.” In fact, one could call it just about anything else.
“Well, for a duke to marry a seamstress is an extraordinary thing. It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it? He must have fallen desperately in love with you.”
That wasn’t the truth at all, of course. But how could Emma tell them that he’d married her chiefly because hers was the first convenient womb to appear in his library?
She was saved from answering when a pincushion nestled in a nearby darning basket unfurled itself and toddled away. “Was that a hedgehog?”
Penny’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, but the poor dear’s terribly shy. On account of her traumatic youth, you see. Do have a biscuit. Nicola made them. They’re heavenly.”
Emma reached for one and took a bite. She’d given up on trying to understand anything in this house. She was a barnacle on the hull of the HMS Penelope—she’d no idea of their destination, but she was along for the ride.
Goodness. The biscuit was heavenly. Buttery sweetness melted on her tongue.
“Please don’t think we’re mining you for gossip,” Miss Mountbatten—Alexandra, was it?—said. “Penny’s only curious. We wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“We scarcely talk to anyone else,” Nicola said. “We’ve a tight little club, the three of us.”
Penny smiled and reached for Emma’s hand. “With room for a fourth, of course.”
“In that case . . .” Emma thoughtfully chewed her last bite of biscuit, washing it down with a swallow of tea. “May I be so bold as to ask for some advice?”
In a unanimous, unspoken yes, Penny, Alexandra, and Nicola leaned forward in their chairs.
“It’s about . . .” She lost her nerve for honesty. “It’s about my cat. I took him in from the streets, and he hasn’t a proper name. Will you help me make a list of possibilities?”
Ash. That’s what his friends called him, he’d said. It felt like progress to be admitted to that inner circle, but Emma wasn’t certain she liked that name, either. For man who’d survived severe burns, Ash sounded ironic at best. At worst, it felt cruel.
Besides, she was having too much fun with the others.
She needed to draw him out. Gain his respect. If luck was with her, a pregnancy would take root, but could it be assured in time to help Davina? Doubtful. She must convince him to change his mind, if it didn’t.
In the days since their first night together—their first successful night together, at any rate—he’d made every effort to assure her pleasure. A man who cared for her satisfaction in bed could be convinced to honor her wishes outside it, couldn’t he? She had begun to care about him, however unwillingly.
“If it’s pet names you want, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” Penny said.
Nicola took a tiny pencil from the notebook hanging about her neck on a silver chain. “I’ll keep a list.”
“It must be something affectionate,” Emma said. “For the cat. He’s rather untrusting and prickly, and I can’t seem to draw him out.”
“Well, if it’s a sweet little name you want, there are all the delightful words for new creatures,” Penny said. “Puppy, kitten, piglet, foal, fawn, calf, polliwog . . .”
Alexandra reached for her teacup. “Oh, dear. She’ll go on forever now.”
“That’s just the beginning,” Penny went on. “There are the birds. Duckling, eaglet, gosling, cygnet, poult . . .”
Nicola looked up from her scribbling. “Poult?”
“A turkey hatchling, fresh from the egg.”
Emma laughed. “As tempting as calling him a turkey might be, I think it’s polliwog, duckling, and piglet that are my favorites thus far.”
“I can contribute a few astronomical ones, I suppose,” Alexandra said. “Bright star, twinkles, moonbeam, sunshine . . .”
“Oh, Lord.” Emma could just imagine the duke’s reaction to “Twinkles.” “Those are perfection. What do you think, Nicola?”
“I don’t know. I’m surrounded by gears and levers, for the most part. Pet names aren’t my forte.” Her eye fell on the biscuits. “I suppose there are the sweet things. Sugar, honeycomb, tartlet.”
“I’m afraid I’ve tried most of those already.”
“Sweetmeat?” she suggested in perfect innocence.
After a moment’s pause, the rest of them dissolved into laughter.
“Oh, dear heavens.” Alexandra dashed a tear from her eye.
Nicola looked at the three of them. “What?”
“Nothing,” Emma said. “You truly do have a brilliant mind.” She nodded at the notebook. “You must most definitely add sweetmeat to the list.”
A half hour later, she left Lady Penelope Campion’s house with a packet of leftover biscuits and a quiver full of verbal arrows. Hopefully one or two of them would pierce the reserve of laughter in his chest. She knew better than to aim for his heart.
Penny embraced her in farewell. “Do keep trying with your cat. The creatures most difficult to reach make the most loving companions in the end.”
Emma felt a sharp twinge of irony. She had no doubt in Penny’s ability to tame not only cats, but pups and goats and Highland calves and even traumatized hedgehogs.
But the duke she’d married was a different sort of beast.
Chapter Thirteen
Bang.
Ash lifted his head from the accounts ledger.
Don’t mind it, he told himself. Mrs. Norton will see to whatever it is. It’s not your concern.
But when he lowered his head, he found himself unable to focus on the work at hand. He pushed back from the desk and stood, leaving the room in brisk paces.
If he’d ever possessed the ability to ignore explosive noises, he’d left that talent behind at Waterloo.
After tense moments of searching, he discovered the source of the clamor. A brass embellishment had crashed to the morning room floor. That sight, in itself, was nothing particularly remarkable. What took him aback was the other half of the scene: His wife standing on a ladder and clinging to the curtain rod, a good twelve feet above the floor.
She craned her neck to look at him. “Oh, hullo.”
“What is this?”
“I’m taking down these draperies.”
“Alone?” He crossed the room and put his hands on the ladder. Someone had to be near her in case she tumbled and fell.
“Sorry if I alarmed you with all that noise. I lost my grip on the finial.”
She’d lost her grip on the finial. Bully for her. Ash was losing his grip on his sanity.
“Since you seem to need reminding, you are a duchess. Not a circus performer or a squirrel.”
She made a dismissive noise. “It’s a ladder, not a trapeze. And I engaged the wheel lock. I promise, I do know how these things work.”
“Yes, but apparently you don’t know how servants work.” He braced the ladder under her feet, wheel lock or no. If she insisted on risking her neck, he felt entitled to bark at her. “Come down from there, then.”
“I may as well finish what I came up here for. Or else all of this effort will have been for nothing.”
“Oh, do go ahead,” he said in a bored tone. “It’s not as though I have anything else to do. I’m only amusing myself overseeing estates all over the country. Making improvements to the land. Looking out for the welfare of thousands of tenants.”