And then, when she turned red with embarrassment and started to explain herself, the earl just laughed and started to egg her on. “I’m a great supporter of Fox,” he said. “And I like the Prince of Wales. What’s not to like in a man who boasts of eating twenty-four hens’ eggs at one sitting? If I haven’t taken my seat in the House, it’s only because I’d hate to rub my brother-in-law’s nose in his own foolishness.”
She couldn’t go along with that, so she switched sides and defended the duke’s recent speech to the House about the lunacy of providing the Prince with an allowance of 100,000 pounds per year. But when the duke’s eyes lit up, she felt it only fair to point out the reverse as well, that as the Duke of Cornwall, the Prince was entitled to duchy revenues as well as money from the Civil List.
The duke groaned. The Duchess of Berrow changed the subject with a comment about the need for parliamentary reforms in Ireland, and before she knew it, the meal flew by.
The other end of the table was having a far more sedate conversation. Most of the time the marquess seemed to be reciting poetry. The verses sounded rather awful, but then they all started quoting snippets of verse at each other. She happened to meet the duke’s eyes during a pause in their conversation and saw perfect comprehension there.
“I haven’t read a book of poetry in years,” he said, leaning over to her.
“We ought to have,” she said, feeling laughter bubbling up at the pure pleasure of it. “We are very ill-prepared for a cultural conversation. Not even Thomas Gray, Your Grace?”
“Not even!” he said cheerfully.
“O ye pens and O ye pencils,” declaimed the marquess from the other end of the table, “And all ye scribbling utensils, say in what words and in what meter, shall unfeigned admiration greet her!”
“I can deduce that was a couplet,” the duke said, his eyes dancing. He was so beautiful, Charlotte thought dimly. And so brilliant.
His duchess was apparently enjoying this poetry; she was clapping her hands.
“I just figured out that it rhymes,” the duke said to her. “In what meter and greet her.” His raised eyebrow was enough to send her into a storm of giggles. Luckily, Lord Corbin intervened to ask about William Whitehead, who was the current Poet Laureate but had refused to write poetry that conformed to government policy.
She turned away from the duke with a palpable pang. This will never do, she told herself. He’s married and he’s a duke. You’re nothing more than an old maid, for all you somehow found yourself at this party. But she knew…
She knew how she found herself at the party.
Beaumont had asked to have her. The fact was like a warm blanket on a chilly night. For the first time in her life, a man was claiming her presence.
He was married, that was true.
His wife was one of the most beautiful women in Europe—and yet he had asked her to supper.
The duchess doesn’t understand the political life, Charlotte told herself.
She liked paltry poetry, with terrible rhymes.
She doesn’t understand him.
On the other end of the table, the Marquess of Wharton and Malmesbury was enjoying himself just as much as was Charlotte, though for rather different reasons. For one thing, he had his beloved daughter to his right, and his beloved Mrs. Grope to his left. He knew himself to be a rather simple man, at heart. He expressed himself in dense rhyme and eloquent meter…but inside he knew that the subjects of his poetry sprang from his heart. His daughter, his beloved, his cat, cream pastries now and then.