“But—but how long will that take?” she demanded, not at all pleased with this revelation.
“Lord, how should I know? Old Crumpton—Papa’s solicitor, you know—says it might take several months.”
“Months?” La Fantasia shrieked, before remembering to modify her voice to a seductive purr. “Months? Whatever shall we find to do in the meantime?”
The look she cast him from under her lashes left Theodore in no doubt as to her meaning, but he stood up and reached for his breeches. “I’m sorry, Fanny, but I’ve a hundred things to do. Truth to tell, it’s all a bit much.” Seeing her pout, he stroked her rouged cheek with the back of one finger. “Thank you, Fanny. For helping me forget about it, at least for a little while.”
La Fantasia, not much mollified by this speech, arranged herself more attractively amidst the rumpled bedclothes, and smiled coyly at him. “Best not take too long, darling. The Earl of Iversleigh has been most assiduous in his attentions, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’m well aware that I’m the most envied man in London.”
She preened a little at the compliment. “Still, you’d best have a care. I won’t wait forever, you know.” She peeped up at him from under her lashes. “Of course, there are ways to be sure of me.”
“Anything,” Theodore declared ardently, catching up her hand and pressing passionate kisses into her palm. “You have only to name it, Fanny. You know I adore you! What is it you want? Diamonds? Emeralds? Rubies? Only say the word, and they’re yours.”
“And how, pray, are you to buy them on the pittance that serves as your allowance?”
“It’s only for a little while, and it may not take that long, after all. In the meantime, I’m sure my credit is good.”
She gave a disdainful sniff. “I thought I might go for a drive in St. James’s this afternoon. I wonder if I might see Lord Iversleigh there?”
“Don’t toy with me, Fanny! Tell me what it is that you want.”
She rose slowly from the bed, and the sheets fell away to reveal the full glory of her figure. “Every duke needs a duchess, you know,” she said huskily.
“M-Marriage?” Theodore stammered, his ardor considerably cooled. “You want—you expect me to offer you marriage?”
“You said I might have anything I wanted,” she reminded him.
“Yes, but—but—dash it, Fanny, I’m not ready to marry anyone just yet!”
“I shan’t object to a long engagement,” she said reassuringly. “Let us say, just as long as it takes for the will to be probated.”
He gave a shaky little laugh, but he had the lowering conviction that she was not joking. “You—you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand very well!” she cried, her exquisite body flushing a mottled red hue.
“I meant no offense, Fan,” he said hastily. “It’s just that, well, my position, you know—I have a responsibility —”
“In other words, I’m good enough for a tumble ’twixt the sheets, but your duchess must be a virgin!”
“Not necessarily,” Theodore protested. “I might not object to a young widow.”
Having clarified this point, he picked up his shirt and pulled it over his head, and thus failed to observe the warning signs of the approaching storm. His head emerged from the neck of his shirt just in time to see his inamorata snatch a china shepherdess from over the mantel.
“Get out!” she screeched in accents more suited to a Billingsgate fishwife than an aspiring duchess, and hurled the ornament at his head.
He ducked only just in time, and the shepherdess shattered against the wall behind him. “Here now, Fan, there’s no cause for—”
“Get—out!” she shrieked again, and a porcelain vase followed the shepherdess, glancing off Theodore’s shoulder as she berated him with a vocabulary he had not known she had possessed, including a few words that were unfamiliar to him in spite of a fairly comprehensive education on the subject at first Eton and then Oxford.
“Fanny, I meant no—I’m sorry—ow!—Dash it, Fan, be reasonable—”
But La Fantasia, that most courted of all London courtesans, was in no mood for reason. When a crystal candy dish was hurled in his direction, followed in rapid succession by two brass candlesticks and a small ormolu clock, Theodore decided discretion was indeed the better part of valor. He snatched up the rest of his clothes and beat a hasty retreat, sped on his way by what trinkets La Fantasia could lay her hands on as she chased after him down the stairs and out of the house.
Thus his grace the Duke of Reddington, taking leave of his mistress while hopping on one foot in an attempt to tug on his boot—his collar open, his cravat hanging loosely about his neck, his coat and waistcoat caught up over his arm, and his other boot clutched in one hand, held out before him as if it might offer some protection from the hellish fury of a woman scorned.
At last the door slammed shut behind him, and Theodore, judging it safe, stopped on the pavement long enough to put on his other boot and shrug his arms into his coat and waistcoat. He glanced up and down the street, but took little comfort in the fact that there were no carriages visible in what was primarily a quiet residential street. Word of the fracas would certainly get out; these things always did, conveyed from the servants of one house to the servants of another and thence from servants to masters, until everyone from the lowliest scullery maid to the Marquess of Cutliffe himself, who occupied a house on the other end of the street when he was in Town, would have got wind of it. From there, of course, word would spread to other houses in other streets via the gentlemen’s clubs and the ladies’ tea parties, until all of London would know of it.
In truth, though, Theodore’s sense of humiliation sprang from other causes than his being the target of La Fantasia’s rage. He had known, of course, that she had accepted him
