That wasn’t all that would happen after the wedding.
There was the wedding night, which, according to Mama, would not be unpleasant, although she’d been rather vague regarding details. But after the wedding night came the marriage, years and years of it. To Ashmont.
The about-to-be Duchess of Ashmont picked up the cup of brandy-laced tea Lady Newland had brought to steady bridal nerves. The cup was empty.
“Do not even think of bolting,” her aunt had said when she delivered the doctored tea.
Certainly not. Too late for that, even if Olympia had been the sort of girl who backed down or ran away from anything, let alone the chance of a lifetime. She had six brothers. Being the second eldest child counted for nothing with boys. It was dominate or be dominated.
Some said she was rather too dominating, for a girl. But that wouldn’t matter when she became a duchess.
She bent and retrieved from under the dressing table the flask of brandy she’d stolen from Stephen. She unstopped it, brought it to her mouth, and tipped in what she gauged as a thimbleful. She stopped it again, set it on the dressing table, and told herself she was doing the right thing.
What was the alternative? Humiliate the bridegroom, who’d done nothing—to Olympia, in any event—to deserve it? Disgrace her family? Face permanent social ruin? And all on account of what? The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, which surely was nothing more than the usual wedding-day anxiety.
Only a lunatic would run away from becoming the bride of one of the kingdom’s handsomest, richest, most powerful men, she told herself. That was to say, Ashmont could be powerful, if he’d bother, but he . . .
She lost her train of thought because somebody tapped at the door.
“Please,” she said. “I’m praying.”
She’d insisted on time alone. She needed to collect herself and prepare for this immense change in her life, she’d told her mother and aunt. They’d looked at each other, then left. Soon thereafter, Aunt Lavinia had returned with the doctored tea.
“Ten minutes, dear,” came her mother’s voice from the corridor.
Ten minutes already?
Olympia unstopped the flask again and took another sip.
Nearly six and twenty, she reminded herself. She’d never get an offer like this one, ever again. It was a miracle she’d got this one. And she’d known what she was doing when she said yes.
True, Lucius Wilmot Beckingham, the sixth Duke of Ashmont, was a bit of an ass, and so immature he made nine-year-old Clarence look like King Solomon. And yes, it went without saying that His Grace would be unfaithful.
But Ashmont was handsome, and he could charm a girl witless when he set his mind to it, and he’d definitely set his mind to charming her. He seemed to like her. And it wasn’t as though any great shocks were in store for her. His character was well known to anybody who read the gossipy parts of the fashionable periodicals.
The important thing was, he’d asked. And she was desperate.
“A duchess,” she told the looking glass. “You can practically change the world, or at least part of it. It’s as close as a woman can come to being a man, unless she becomes the queen—and no mere consort either, but queen in her own right. Even then . . . Oh, never mind. It’s not going to happen to you, my girl.”
Somewhere in Olympia’s head or maybe her heart or her stomach, a snide little voice, exactly like her cousin Edwina’s, said, “The Love of a Lifetime is never going to happen to you, either. No Prince Charming on his white charger will come for you. Not even a passionate lord. Or a shop clerk, for that matter.”
She suffocated the voice, as she had wished, many times, to suffocate Cousin Edwina.
The Olympia who’d entertained fantasies of princes and passionate gentlemen had been a naive creature, head teeming with novel-fed romantic fantasies as she embarked on her first London Season.
For seven years, she’d been voted Most Boring Girl of the Season. In seven years, she’d received not a single offer. That was to say, she’d received no offer any young lady in her right mind, no matter how desperate, would accept or, as had happened in the case of an elderly suitor, would be allowed to accept.
And so, when Ashmont had asked, what could she say?
She could say no, and face a future as an elderly spinster dependent on brothers who could barely support themselves and their own families. Or she could say yes and solve a great many problems at once. It was as simple as that. No point in making it complicated.
She took another sip of brandy. And another.
There came louder and more impatient tapping at the door.
“It’s the right thing to do and I’m going to do it,” she whispered to her reflection, “because somebody has to.”
She took another swig.
“What the devil’s keeping her?” Ashmont said.
The guests whispered busily. At every sound from outside the drawing room, heads turned to the door through which the bride was to come.
No bride had made her entrance. It must be half an hour past the appointed time.
Ripley had gone out to inquire of the bride’s mother whether Lady Olympia was ill. Lady Gonerby had looked bewildered and only shook her head. Her sister Lady Newland had explained.
“Something to do with the dress,” Ripley said. “The aunt’s gone up with a maid and a sewing case.”
“A sewing case!”
“Something’s come undone, I take it.”
“What the devil do I care?” said Ashmont. “I’m going to undo it later, in any event.”
“You know how women are,” Ripley said.
“It isn’t like Olympia to fuss over trifles.”
“A wedding dress is not a trifle,” Ripley said. “I ought to know. M’sister’s cost more than that filly I had of Pershore.”
His sister wasn’t here. According to Blackwood, Alice had gone to Camberley Place, one of Ripley’s properties, to look after their favorite aunt.
“This is boring,” Ashmont said. “I hate these bloody rituals.”
Lord Gonerby left the drawing room. He returned a moment later and said, jovially, “Apologies for the delay. Something to do with a troublesome hem or flounce or some such. I’ve sent for champagne. No sense in getting thirsty while the sewing needles are at work.”
A moment later the butler entered with a brace of footmen, all bearing trays of glasses.
Ashmont drank one, then another and another, in rapid succession.
Ripley drank, too, but not much. This was partly because he hadn’t yet recovered from last night’s activities. He must be getting old, because he could have used another hour or more of sleep, after the extended bout of gambling and drinking followed by a street brawl followed by the too-familiar labor of getting Ashmont out of a melee and home and to bed.
The other reason he abstained was the job he’d undertaken.
Last night, at Crockford’s, Ashmont had asked—or insisted, rather—that one of his two friends supervise today’s proceedings.