As she watched, Quentin walked off down the street after the carriage, and the duke turned back to the house. She heard his voice in the hall and waited for him to come back to her, but he didn't. She'd expected a word of approval… a moment's conversation about the visit… something, at least. Crossly, she went into the hall.
"Where's His Grace, Cadett?"
"In the library, I believe, my lady."
She turned down the corridor to the library at the back of the house. She knocked and marched in.
Tarquin looked up from his newspaper with an air of surprise.
"Did I conduct myself appropriately, my lord duke?" she said with an ironic curtsy.
Tarquin laid down his newspaper and leaned back in his chair. "I have offended you again, I fear. Tell me what I've done wrong so that I can correct my faults."
This assumption of chastened humility was so absurd, Juliana burst into a peal of laughter. "I fear you're a lost cause, my lord duke."
Before the conversation could go further, the butler appeared in the open door behind her.
"Visitors for Lady Edgecombe. I've shown them to your private parlor, madam."
Juliana turned, startled. "Visitors. Who?"
"Three young ladies, madam. Miss Emma, Miss Lilly, and Miss Rosamund. I thought they would be more comfortable in your parlor." Not a flicker of an expression crossed his face.
Had Catlett guessed the ladies from Russell Street were of a different order from Lady Melton and her daughter? Or had he assumed she would entertain her own friends in her own parlor?
"Excuse me, Your Grace." With a smile and curtsy she left him and hurried upstairs to her own private room.
Tarquin raised an eyebrow to the empty room and shrugged. The only woman he'd ever lived with until now had been his mother. Apparently he had something to learn in his dealings with the gentler sex-and it seemed that Juliana Courtney, Viscountess Edgecombe, was going to provide the education. Absently, he wondered why the prospect wasn't more irritating.
Juliana hurried up to her parlor, vaguely surprised at how eager she was to see her friends from Russell Street. She hadn't had much time to get to know them, but living under one roof with them even briefly had fostered the kind of easy camaraderie that came out of shared laughter as well as shared anxieties.
"Juliana, this is the most elegant parlor," Rosamund declared as Juliana came in.
"Lud, but the whole mansion is in the first style of elegance." Lilly floated across the room to embrace Juliana. "You are the luckiest creature. And just look at your gown! So pretty. And real silver buckles on your shoes, I'll be bound." The eye of the expert took in every detail of Juliana's costume.
"I swear I'll die of envy," Emma lamented, fanning herself. "Unless, of course, there is some unpleasantness here." Her eyes sharpened as she looked at Juliana over her fan. "You must have to pay for all this in some way."
"Yes, tell us all about it." Rosamund linked arms with Juliana and pulled her down onto the sofa beside her. "You can say anything you wish to us."
Juliana was tempted to confide the whole as they sat around her radiating both complicit sympathy and alert curiosity. But an instant's reflection canceled the dangerous impulse. She must learn to keep her own secrets better than she had done so far. If she hadn't yielded to weakness in the first instance and told Mistress Dennison her story, she wouldn't be in this tangle now.
"There's nothing to tell," she said. "It is exactly as you see it. I was wed to Viscount Edgecombe yesterday, and he and I both reside under the Duke of Redmayne's roof."
"So the duke didn't buy you for himself?" Emma pressed, leaning forward to get a closer view of Juliana's face.
"In a manner of speaking he did," Juliana said cautiously.
"So both he and the viscount are your lovers." Lilly smoothed her silk gloves over her fingers, her hazel eyes sharply assessing.
"Not exactly."
"La, Juliana, don't be so mysterious!" Emma cried. "Everyone wants to know how you managed such a piece of amazing good fortune. There's nothing strange about being shared… particularly when you're provided for with settlements. You are, of course?"
"Yes." Juliana decided that it would be simpler to let them believe that she was shared by the duke and his young cousin. It wasn't a total fabrication, anyway. "I'm well provided for, and I suppose you could say that I belong to both the duke and the viscount." She rose and pulled the bell rope. "Will you take ratafia, or sherry… or champagne?" she added with wicked inspiration. "Do you care for champagne?"
"La, how wonderful," Lilly declared. "You can order such things for yourself in this house?"
"Anything I please," Juliana said with a hint of bravado as the butler arrived in answer to the summons. "Catlett, bring us champagne, if you please."
"My lady." Catlett bowed and left without so much as a flicker of an eyelid.
"See," Juliana said with a grin. "I have the right to command anything I wish."
"How enviable," Rosamund sighed. "When I think of poor Lucy Tibbet…"A cloud of gloom settled over Juliana's three visitors, imparting a cynical, world-weary air to the previously bright and youthful countenances.
"Lucy Tibbet?" she prompted.
"She worked in one of Haddock's millinery shops," Emma said, her usually sweet voice sharp as vinegar. "Keep away from Mother Haddock if you value your life, Juliana."
"She's every bit as bad as Richard Haddock," Rosamund said. "We all thought when he died, his wife would be easier to work for. But Elizabeth is as mean and cruel as Richard ever was."
Catlett's arrival with the champagne produced a melancholy silence broken only by the pop of the cork and the fizz of the straw-colored liquid in the glasses. Catlett passed them around and bowed himself out.
"What's wrong with a millinery shop?" Juliana sipped champagne, wrinkling her nose as the bubbles tickled her palate.
"It's a whorehouse, dear," Lilly said with a somewhat pitying air. "They all are in Covent Garden … so are the chocolate houses and coffeehouses. It's just a different name to satisfy the local constables. We can't call them whorehouses, although everyone knows that's what they are."
The others chuckled at Juliana's quaint ignorance. "The Haddocks rent out shops and shacks in the Piazza . . . usually for three guineas a week. They pay the rates and expect a share of the profits."
"Not that there ever are any profits," Lilly said. "Lucy spent ten pounds last week on rent and linen and glasses that she had to buy from Mother Haddock, and she had only sixpence for herself at the end of the week."
"She'd given Richard a promissory note before he died for forty pounds," Rosamund continued with the explanation. "He'd bailed her out of debtors' prison once, and she was supposed to pay him back every week. But she can't do that out of sixpence, so Mother Haddock called in the debt and had her thrown into the Marshalsea."
"We're having a collection for her," Lilly said. "We all try to help out if we can."
"You never know when it might be you," Rosamund added glumly.
"Some of the bawds will make an interest-free loan if they like one of the girls who's in trouble," Lilly said. "But Lucy made a lot of enemies when she was doing well for herself, and now she's down on her luck, none of the bawds will lift a finger."