Harry sat back down, pulling his spectacles off to remove the blob of potatoes smeared across one lens. Plum stared at her plate as a sobbing Juan was led from the room by Ben, a variety of potent epithets and curses regarding devil-spawned children clearly audible in-between the sobs.
Temple looked around the room, his distaste evident. Thom’s face was placid, but Plum could see the merriment dancing in her eyes. Thom picked up her plate, and with a little bob to Harry, excused herself. “I think I’ll have my dinner in the nursery this once, if you don’t mind. I’m sure the children could do with someone keeping an eye on them.”
Harry flinched at her words. Plum, torn between the nearly overwhelming desire to cry and the urge to reassure Harry that he would not be subjected to another such scene (although she was at a loss as to how she was to guarantee any such thing), nodded at Thom and waved one of the footmen away from wiping potatoes from the window. “William, would you please ask Cook to send supper up to the nursery?”
“They don’t deserve supper,” Harry said, still obviously a bit snappish about the children, which, considering he was wearing a boutonniere of mashed potatoes garnished with French beans, was understandable.
Plum waved her hand at the footman to do as she ordered, and turned back to apologize to Harry. “I’m sorry,” she said at the exact instance he looked up, and said the same words to her.
“I believe I will finish my dinner in the servant’s hall,” Temple said quietly, and removed himself from the dining room.
The remaining footman followed Temple after receiving Harry’s scowl. Plum’s spirits sank as her husband threw his potato-riddled napkin down, and rose to stalk down the length of the long table.
“Truly, Harry, the children were just—”
“Abominable, yes, I’m well aware of your assessment of their behavior. It is in complete harmony with mine. Um…you have a bit of potato in your hair. If you would allow me…”
Plum sat still while he dabbed at her head with her napkin. She was a mass of indecision, wanting to tell him the children’s behavior at dinner was her fault, and yet admitting to herself that his label was more or less correct. The key, she decided after they spent the remainder of dinner in silence, was to show him not how badly behaved the children were, but how much she could do for them.
“Which brings me back to the problem at hand,” Plum said, shaking off the memories of the disastrous dinner as she combed her now potato-free hair before the soft, fragrant breeze of the open window. As thick as her hair was, it took forever to dry. She particularly wanted it dry soon, since the look Harry had given her after dinner boded very well for her plans to engage in many, many connubial calisthenics before the week was out, and everyone knew that damp hair had no place in the marriage bed.
“How to make the children mind you?” Thom asked, still pouring over the book sitting before her. Plum craned her neck to see what it was that Thom found so fascinating, then jumped up and gasped, “Thomasine! What are you doing with that?”
Thom put a finger on a page to mark her spot, and looked up. “Reading. It’s very informative. How did you come up with the idea of Hunter Loosing an Arrow into a Mossy Crevice? I would think that something like that would hurt, should the gentleman’s aim be off.”
Plum marched over to her niece and snatched the book from her hands, stuffing it into the back of the writing bureau and slamming the lid shut. “Charles was very inventive and his aim was never off. That is all I am going to say on the subject.”
Thom grinned. Plum shook a finger at that grin. “I’ve told you before that you’re not to read the Guide until you are married!”
“I have no plans to ever marry. I shall be a doting aunt to your children. And Harry’s, too, if he’ll let me. I rather like them.”
“So do I, but that’s neither here nor there. And you’re changing the subject — that book is not suitable reading for you, and that’s that.”
Thom tipped her head and looked Plum over as she returned to her chair before the window and resumed drying her hair. “Are you ashamed that you wrote it?”
“Of course I’m not ashamed…not in the sense you mean, I’m not. There is nothing in there that is coarse or distasteful, it’s simply instruction of an intimate nature, a celebration if you will of the physical union between a husband and wife.”
“Then why did you hide the book away in the bureau? Why don’t you set it out so people can see it and know you are the author?”
A look of horror crawled across Plum’s face. Her stomach balled up into a tiny little lead weight with the thought of just how their lives would be ruined should the identity of Vyvyan La Blue be made public. “Dear God in heaven, that would be the end.”
“Oh, surely you exaggerate,” Thom said.
Plum shook her head, horrific visions dancing in her head of ostracization a million times worse than what she’d experienced. “The last scandal took the life of your beloved mother, Thom. This one would…oh, it would destroy us all! You, Harry, the children…everyone would be tainted, everyone would be shunned.”
“Pooh. People wouldn’t be so cruel over such a silly thing.”
“Silly?” Plum stared at her niece, desperate to make her understand lest the girl inadvertently give away her secret. Before there was just Thom and herself to worry about, but now she had six more souls to protect. “Silly? Thom, I was silly once, when I was your age. Silly and naive to believe Charles was being truthful and honest when he married me. I suffered for that silliness, as did my family, most particularly your mother. Because of that silliness, I will have to spend the rest of my life in the country, which I don’t mind, I prefer country life, and thankfully Harry seems disinclined to go into town or polite society, but the fact remains that I cannot go anywhere people know me, or know of my past.”
Thom made an annoyed sound. “I don’t believe any of your acquaintances would still remember that old farrago. Yes, the people in Ram’s Bottom were rude to you about it, but they aren’t society, and that’s who you’re worried about. You told me yourself that the ton isn’t happy unless it has a new scandal to chew over each week.”
“They might need a new scandal each week, but they also have exceptionally long memories. Truthfully, Thom, that scandal would pale in comparison to the one that would be generated should the ton become aware that the author of the most infamous book yet published was none other than the Marchioness Rosse. Society might titter and gossip behind their hands about a woman who was foolish enough to marry Charles, but they would cut dead everyone who was related — by birth or circumstance — to the author of the Guide.”
Thom shrugged. “I know Mama felt differently, but I don’t mind being shunned.”
“I know you don’t, a fact I am profoundly grateful for, one which has me begging for forgiveness every night in my prayers, but your feet trod a different path than most people’s. You are not a well-respected and well-liked man who has committed no sin but marrying a woman with a secret; you are not an innocent child with your life spread before you, a life that will be cruelly ruined, with no hope of ever taking your rightful place in the society to which you were born.”