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“Yes, but—”

“I can’t allow her to give me a cuckoo. But if she’s that determined, I can”—he paused and considered his words for a moment—“be of assistance.”

“So you’ll—what are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell her that if she wants a child that much, she’ll have to take me. It’s unfortunate that the process is going to be about as much fun as going to a tooth-drawer.”

Darby blinked. “I didn’t know it was that bad between you.”

“In the bedchamber it was.”

It was Darby’s turn to stay silent. He couldn’t imagine being married to someone under those circumstances. They walked along, and Darby decided that he would go home and lure Henrietta into their chamber for a little dalliance. They were in danger of forgetting how fortunate they were.

“I must be cracked myself,” Rees suddenly said. “I’m actually thinking of trying to get her back in the house.”

Darby gaped. “Going respectable in your old age?”

“Hell, no. I need help with the opera,” Rees said grimly. “It’s garbage. I was thinking of trading my assistance in creating offspring for Helene’s help with the scores.”

“Are things that bad with the current piece?”

“Worse. It’s overdue by months, and I have nothing worth hearing. Nothing.”

“Helene will murder you if you put it so bluntly,” Darby said after a moment. “You’ll have to emphasize the fact you want your children under your own roof. But what will you do about Lina?”

“She’s bored to death with me. I’ll give her an allowance so she needn’t take another lover. She has a quite prudish streak, and I dislike the idea that she might have to take on a curmudgeon like myself.”

One thing Rees hadn’t told Darby was that he was going to the ball as much for Helene’s sake as for his own. Who the hell would want to sleep with Helene? Likely she would be humiliated by discovering that gentlemen wanted a ripe little body and a come-hither manner when it came to dalliance. They didn’t want a stiff scarecrow with a pile of braids bigger than a halo, and a reputation to match. True, Helene somehow inveigled Fairfax-Lacy to follow her about last summer, but then he’d up and married another woman within a few weeks. That can’t have been easy for Helene.

It was almost amusing to realize that he was feeling both guilty and protective. Perhaps his wife’s reckless wish to destroy her own reputation was his fault. If they were still living in the same house, this child business likely would have worked itself out in the normal way, years ago. And estranged though they might be, Rees couldn’t stand the idea that his wife would be rebuffed at the ball. She was no Cinderella, after all, with a fairy godmother waiting in the wings.

He would just have to wave his own magic wand. He found himself grinning at that, and decided not to share the joke with Darby. They’d never been the kind of friends who sat around trading bawdy jokes and hawing with laughter. And it didn’t seem polite, not in reference to his own wife.

Seven

Undergarments Are Vastly Overrated

Helene wasn’t sure she could do it. It was one thing to stand half-naked in a small dressing room, with Esme, Monsieur Olivier, and Madame Rocque enthusiastically applauding. But it was quite another story to appear in public wearing a costume not much heavier than a nightrail. Although the bottom layer of rose silk was just slightly darker than the top, individually, each layer was transparent. Helene’s entire body was on display. The silk was so fine that it clung and then swirled, just barely concealing her most private areas.

The only saving grace of the whole situation was that her mother was paying a visit to friends in Bath. Helene could just imagine her reaction to Madame Rocque’s gown. She would have locked Helene in the wine cellar rather than let her be seen in such a state. This gown didn’t hide her lack of breasts; it put that lack on display for all to see. Color rose in Helene’s cheeks at the memory of the only person who had seen her unclothed, in her adult life. Her husband had laughed out loud the first time he saw her breasts.

Rees’s laughter had been the beginning of a disastrous night. They were on their way to Gretna Green but had stopped at an inn, as Rees had pointed out that her father would never bother to chase them. Of course, he was correct. It wasn’t every day that the heir to an earldom elopes with one’s daughter, and Helene’s father was likely swilling champagne at home while his daughter waited in a bedchamber, fairly trembling with adoration for her almost-husband.

She had waited, and waited, and waited. But Rees had apparently decided to loiter in the tavern, and when he finally appeared in her doorway, he had to catch himself against the door frame so as not to fall down. She had giggled, thinking it all romantic. There was nothing Rees could do wrong: not this big, beautiful man who thought about music as much as she did. When he kissed her, Handel’s arias exploded in her mind, aching, arching waves of sound stretching to the very tips of her fingertips.

Well, if their kisses were Handel, then the actual bedding was naught more than a Beggar’s Opera. Because Rees pulled off her gown and then fell about laughing, finally asking whether her breasts had evaporated in the last rain. By an hour later, it was clear to her that the rest of her body was as unsuited to matrimony as was her chest. Helene dismissed the memory with a little shudder.

Saunders, Helene’s personal maid, obviously didn’t know what to make of her mistress’s transformation. At the moment she was bustling about folding clothing, but she kept stealing glances over her shoulder. “Would you like me to make some nice curls in your hair, my lady?” she said now, waving a curling iron. “We could wrap a bandeau around your head and with just a few curls, it would look quite, quite—” Saunders couldn’t bring herself to say fashionable. The fashion was for ringlets bobbing around one’s ears, and Lady Godwin didn’t have enough hair for even one ringlet.

Helene smiled and seated herself at her dressing table. “I like my hair as it is, thank you. Saunders, do we have any rouge?”

“No, my lady.”

Helene bit her lower lip. Her cheeks were the color of a frightened ghost.

“Mrs. Crewe has a large collection,” Saunders added. “Would you like me to fetch it?”

“Mrs. Crewe?” Helene said, picturing her mother’s starchy housekeeper. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Mrs. Crewe wearing face paints!”