“Not in front of you,” Zenobia said.
Linnet waited.
“All you need to know at the moment is that he can’t father a child,” her aunt added. “That’s the crucial point.”
Linnet put that fact together with various comments her mother had made over the years, and found she had absolutely no inclination to inquire further. “How is that better than simpleminded?” she asked. “In a husband, I mean.”
“Simpleminded could mean drool at the dinner table and Lord knows what,” her aunt explained.
“You’re talking about the Beast!” her father suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve heard all about him. Just didn’t put it together at first.”
“Marchant is no beast,” Zenobia scoffed. “That’s rank gossip, Cornelius, and I would think it beneath you.”
“Everyone calls him that,” the viscount pointed out. “The man’s got a terrible temper. Brilliant doctor—or so everyone says—but the temper of a fiend.”
“A tantrum here or there is part of marriage,” Zenobia said, shrugging. “Wait until he sees how beautiful Linnet is. He’ll be shocked and delighted that fate blessed him with such a lovely bride.”
“Must I really choose between simpleminded and beastly?” Linnet inquired.
“No, between simpleminded and incapable,” her aunt said impatiently. “Your new husband will be grateful for that child you’re supposedly carrying, and I can tell you that your new father-in-law will be ecstatic.”
“He will?” Lord Sundon asked.
“Don’t you understand yet?” Zenobia said, jumping to her feet. She walked a few steps, and then twirled around in a fine gesture. “On the one side, we have a lonely duke, with one son. Just one. And that duke is obsessed with royalty, mind. He considers himself a bosom friend of the king, or at least he did before the king turned batty as a . . . as a bat.”
“Got that,” the viscount said.
“Hush,” Zenobia said impatiently. She hated being interrupted. “On the one side, the lonely, desperate duke. On the other, the wounded, incapable son. In the balance . . . a kingdom.”
“A kingdom?” the viscount repeated, his eyes bulging.
“She means it metaphorically,” Linnet said, taking another crumpet. She had seen rather more of her aunt than her father had, and she was familiar with her love of rhetorical flourishes.
“A kingdom without a future, because there is no child to carry on the family name,” Zenobia said, opening her eyes wide.
“Is the duke—” Lord Sundon began.
“Hush,” she snapped. “I ask you, what does this desperately unhappy family need?”
Neither Linnet nor her father dared to answer.
Which was fine, because she had only paused for effect. “I ask you again, what does this desperately unhappy family need? They need . . . an heir!”
“Don’t we all,” the viscount said, sighing.
Linnet reached out and patted her father’s hand. It was one of the rather unkind facts of life that her mama had been extremely free with her favors, and yet she had given her husband only one child, a daughter, who could not inherit the major part of her father’s estate.
“They need,” Zenobia said, raising her voice so as to regain her audience, “they need a prince!”
After a minute or so, Linnet ventured to say, “A prince, Aunt Zenobia?”
That gained her the beatific smile of an actress receiving accolades, if not armfuls of roses, from her audience. “A prince, my dear. And you, lucky girl, have exactly what he needs. He’s looking for a heir, and you have that heir, and what’s more, you’re offering royal bloodlines.”
“I see what you mean,” the viscount said slowly. “It’s not a terrible idea, Zenobia.”
She got a little pink in the face. “None of my ideas are terrible. Ever.”
“But I don’t have a prince,” Linnet said. “If I understand you correctly, the Duke of Windebank is looking for a pregnant woman—”
Her father growled and she amended her statement. “That is, the duke would perhaps acquiesce to a woman in my unfortunate situation because that way his son would have a son—”
“Not just a son,” Zenobia said, her voice still triumphant. “A prince. Windebank isn’t going to take just any lightskirt into his family. He’s frightfully haughty, you know. He’d rather die. But a prince’s son? He’ll fall for that.”
“But—”
“You’re right about that, Zenobia. Be gad, you’re a canny old woman!” her father roared.
Zenobia’s back snapped straight. “What did you say to me, Cornelius?”
He waved his hand. “Didn’t mean it that way, didn’t mean it that way. Pure admiration. Pure unmitigated admiration. Pure—”
“I agree,” she said in a conciliatory tone, patting her hair. “It’s a perfect plan. You’d better go to him this afternoon, though. You have to get her all the way to Wales for the marriage. Marchant lives up there.”
“Marriage,” Linnet said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
They both looked at her and said simultaneously, “What?”
“I’m not carrying a prince!” she shouted. “I never slept with Augustus. Inside my belly I have nothing but a chewed-up crumpet.”
“That is a disgusting comment,” her aunt said with a shudder.
“I agree,” her father chimed in. “Quite distasteful. You sound like a city wife, talking of food in that manner.”
“Distasteful is the fact that you are planning to sell off my unborn child to a duke with a penchant for royalty—when I don’t even have an unborn child!”
“I said this would all have to happen quite quickly,” her aunt said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s say that your father goes to Windebank’s house this very afternoon, and let’s say that Windebank takes the bait, because he will. As I said, the man is desperate, and besides, he would love to meld his line with royal blood.”
“That doesn’t solve the problem,” Linnet said.
“Well, of course not,” Zenobia said, giving her a kindly smile. “We can’t do everything for you. The next part is up to you.”
“What do you mean?”
Her father got up, obviously not listening. “I’ll put on my Jean de Bry coat and Hessians,” he said to himself.
“Not the de Bry,” Zenobia called after him.
He paused at the door. “Why not?”
“The shoulders are a trifle anxious. You mustn’t seem anxious. You’re offering to save the man’s line, after all.”
“Sage-green court coat with a scalloped edge,” her father said, nodding, and disappeared through the door.
“Aunt Zenobia,” Linnet said, showing infinite patience, to her mind. “Just how am I supposed to get a child of royal blood to offer to the husband I’ve never met?”
Zenobia smiled. “My dear, you aren’t a woman of my family if you have to ask that.”
Linnet’s mouth fell open. “You don’t mean—”