“Planning, that’s what’s required. I was heads together with my oldest friend, Penny Blackington. She gave me all kinds of ideas abouthow to look as if I wished to wed while guaranteeing I never would. On my last day, Penny said, ‘Letty, whatever you do, you must long for things. Whatever it is, long for it. It’s highly annoying and bound to do the trick.’”
Valor thought Penny Blackington was on to something. Shehadfound the longing for things annoying.
“Mind you,” Lady Letitia went on, “neither of us could have foreseen Tramondeley’s Cornwall party. When I show Penny how I made that poor portrait artist change my face, she will positively howl with laughter. I had quite the time not laughing myself—everyone seemed to believe that I had no idea what I look like.”
Valor blushed as she recalled how incredulous she was over that sketch. “But why? Do you not wish to wed someday?”
“Oh yes, yesterday if I could. However, the gentleman I intend to wed is a baronet from my neighborhood. Not at all up to snuff, my father has said. So, I go through this pointless exercise and then when the duke is convinced I am on the verge of going on the shelf, he will give in to it. My baronet is fully prepared to wait him out. We get on terrifically—we ride all over the county and he does not mind a bit that I own my own fowling piece. We are country people, not Town people.”
Valor sat back. Lady Letitia appeared in a whole new light. What a brave lady!
Just then, Lady Monroe came into the room.
“Bad news, Lady Monroe,” Lady Letitia said, looking very downcast. “Lord Tramondeley has engaged himself to Lady Valor.”
Lady Monroe looked as if a brick had hit her in the head, momentarily stunned. She clutched at her heart. “Oh God, the duke.”
“Simply write to him that sadly, another season will be required,” Lady Letitia said.
“Yes, goodness, a carefully worded letter. Yes, I must think!”
The lady hurried out of the room.
“I do not blame Lady Monroe for any of it, mind you,” Lady Letitia said. “A desperate lady might try anything. In any case, my baronet and I have agreed—my dowry is enormous, we will settle something on the lady so she does not need to get up to these sorts of schemes in future.”
Valor was positively stunned. It did strike her that she would never again in her life make assumptions about another person. One really never knew. The last thing she would have gathered from Lady Letitia was that she preferred the country and was in love with a baronet. She found herself ashamed of what she’d thought of the lady. She was determined to take Mrs. Right’s advice about shame—it was there to remind you not to do it again.
*
Damiano had wokento find himself in a cell. There were chains around his ankles and they were attached to the wall. The place was dank and dim with no window. There was not a stick of furniture in it, just a cold stone floor covered in green slime. He was not certain whether it was day or night.
The remnants of the prince’s party came back in bits and pieces. He’d failed to murder Tramondeley, foiled by that blasted Lady Letitia of all people. The only worry he’d ever had over that lady was how the marquis would view her if he were forced to take her home as his bride.
He’d thought he might be able to save the whole situation with Lady Valor by blaming Lady Letitia for the knife and naming Tramondeley as a spy for the French.
Then everything went dark. He believed Lady Valor might have hit him over the head with something. If that had been the case, he would never have been ready for it. How could anybody anticipate that nervous little lady hitting them over the head? How were womento be his undoing?
As he pondered his situation, he could not imagine what would happen. Would he be hanged? Who had locked him up? Had it been the prince? Was he in the tower?
Where was his coat? His shoes? His neckcloth was gone too. He supposed some jailor had made free with them.
He heard the sound of a rusty lock turning and forced himself to sit up despite the ache in his head.
He looked up and found the Lord Chamberlain himself staring down at him.
“Am I in the tower?” he asked.
“Hardly. You are tucked away in a lonely corner of the Marshalsea. You are lucky the prince regent and the queen are in agreement that they do not wish for any talk about this.”
Damiano presumed that meant he would not be hanged. At least not publicly.
“You will be escorted by ship to Morocco where you can see what you can do with the sultan to get yourself across the Strait of Gibraltar and then make your way home from there. You nor any of your family are ever to set foot on our shores again and your estate is confiscated by the Crown.”
“Morocco?”
The Lord Chamberlain laughed. “You did not expect us to sail you home, did you?”
Damiano did not answer. All he did know was that he had an arduous journey ahead of him and an even more arduous interview with the marquis at the end of it. How was he to explain that their estate was gone, they were barred from England, the Mosquito yet lived, and he would have no duke’s daughter on his arm when he arrived?
