The Duke of Villiers walked into the watery morning sunlight, thinking about duke’s daughters named for queens.
Chapter Thirty-one
Two months later, mid-June
1784
All of London was talking about the Duchess of Beaumont’s benefit costume ball for refurbishment of the old Roman baths. It was rumored that at least four duchesses would attend, and perhaps even the King himself. Everyone, of course, would be dressed in proper Roman attire.
Mrs. Mogg and her friends were waiting outside the gate of the baths hours before the ball was due to begin.
They watched as scores of footmen carried in countless garlands of flowers.
“They’ll wrap them around the trees, I’ve no doubt,” Mrs. Mogg said importantly. “The Duchess of Beaumont did just that at a party she had in Paris.” Her friends all nodded. Mrs. Mogg was considered something of an expert on the Beaumonts. After all, she’d talked to the duke himself twice. And she seemed to know everything there was to know about the couple.
“That was when they were living apart,” she continued now. “The duchess was over in Paris, by herself, see, and the duke was here. But then she came back and they fell in love, just like a fairy tale.”
“She’s the best chess player in all England,” Mr. Mogg put in. He had discovered that if he didn’t go along with his wife’s obsession with the ducal family, they had nothing to talk about. So in his own way, he had become an expert too.
“Nay, you’re wrong there,” a bystander said. “The Duke of Villiers is the best chess player. They just had in the paper as how he is the number one ranked player in the Chess Club.”
“But that’s only because the duke and duchess refuse to play each other for a ranking,” Mrs. Mogg said. “I had a shilling and sixpence riding on the duke winning the game with the duchess, and he sent a footman to my house to tell me the match was off.”
“Cor,” the man said, looking at her again.
Mrs. Mogg drew herself up, her fox head stole shaking with excitement. “He sent that footman right to my house, to tell me that.”
“Well, why won’t they play each other?” someone asked respectfully, as befitted a conversation with someone who knew a duke personally.
“I expect because of love,” Mrs. Mogg said. “They’re in love, you know. She calls him Elijah. I heard her, clear as I hear myself. ‘Elijah,’ she called him.”
“Are they really all going to be wearing sheets?” someone asked her. He had a little notebook. “I’m reporting for the Morning Post, madam.”
Everyone looked at her with respect. “That’s what I heard,” Mrs. Mogg said, watching as the reporter wrote down sheets.
There are some people for whom the command to wear a toga is anathema. The Marquise de Perthuis, for example, received her invitation, shuddered, and dropped it in the fireplace. Wearing a shapeless white gown held no interest for her. Besides, she was packing to return to France. Having heard nothing from Henri, she had decided to shock him (and the French court) with the glory of her new chemise gowns.
Lord Corbin was similarly discomposed. How did one wear a proper wig with a toga? And what about shoes? Weren’t ancient Romans prone to wearing roughly-made sandals that displayed one’s toes? He went to the opera instead.
But most other English peers were braver than Corbin, or more curious. “It’s held up on only one shoulder,” Roberta, the Countess of Gryffyn, complained. “What was Jemma thinking of? What if my gown falls straight to the ground while I’m dancing?”
Damon, the Duchess of Beaumont’s brother, dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder. “She was thinking that you would look utterly ravishing in a toga,” her husband said huskily.
Roberta met her husband’s eyes in the glass, and unfortunately that particular couple arrived quite late at the ball.