“I am the duke’s mother,” she told him bluntly. “And Harry is thirteen. I distinctly recall giving birth to him.”
“Impossible,” Nicholas declared. “Why, you’re just a girl. You can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen!”
Emma grimaced. If this was flattery, it was hardly original.
“Oh, forever young!” she said, with a light laugh. “I am thirty, my lord. That is to say, I will be thirty on the first day of the new year. But I thank you for the compliment! My late husband was the tenth Duke of Warwick. My eldest son became the eleventh last December.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said, flushing with embarrassment. “I meant no disrespect to you.”
“Sir, I’m no lady,” Emma told him smartly. “I’m a duchess, and that is not quite the same thing. You may address me as ‘your grace,’ or ‘Duchess,’ or even ‘madam,’ in a pinch, but, never, ever as ‘my lady.’”
Not realizing that she was teasing him, Nicholas silently cursed himself for his ignorance. “Please forgive my blunder,” he said. “I meant no disrespect.”
“I am only joking you,” she assured him gently, squeezing his arm. “Actually, I find the regulations of Society quite stifling. Shall we fly in the face of convention, you and I?”
“Ma’am?”
“What is your Christian name?”
“Oh! Nicholas.”
“Nicholas,” she repeated, smiling. “I hope you will call me Emma, at least when we are alone. May I call you Nicholas?”
“Of course,” he said, flattered. “I prefer it.”
They came to a set of tulipwood doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl. “The library,” Emma announced, as two footmen silently opened the doors with gloved hands.
The room within was immense, but rather dark, with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and few windows. Nicholas stared around him in disbelief. He had never seen so many books in his life. “It’s so dark,” he said. “You’d ruin your eyes reading in here.”
“The light is bad for the books,” she explained. “One doesn’t read in here, of course. We have a reading room for that, if you’re interested. This is the archive. You’re welcome to borrow anything you like,” she added. “The secretary will fetch you any book you fancy. Are you a great reader, sir? Our secretary works very hard to keep the library thoroughly up to date.”
“Apart from our technical manuals, we had nothing on board ship but the Bible and the works of Shakespeare,” he told her, with an odd mixture of pride and deprecation. “When I passed my lieutenant’s exam, my captain gave me Nelson’s biography. I’ve never felt the need to read anything else.”
“Oh,” said Emma, quite taken aback. “I’ve always loved reading.”
“If your grace would condescend to recommend something,” he said eagerly, “I will gladly take a stab at it.”
Emma thought for a moment. “I would recommend Montaigne to anyone,” she said presently, “but he may be especially suitable to someone who hasn’t read very much. He covers such a variety of subjects in his essays. You’re almost certain to find something to interest you.”
“What’s an essay?” he asked.
Emma laughed. “You’re teasing me,” she accused him, wagging her finger at him playfully. “Just because you’re not widely read doesn’t mean I think you’re completely ignorant.”
“No, really,” he assured her. “I am that ignorant. What is an essay? I assume it doesn’t mean a good try?”
Emma had never been required to give a definition of an essay before, and she did not have a ready answer. “Well,” she said, frowning, “I suppose it could be defined as a brief dissertation on a topic. It usually includes some personal reflection.”
“Brief?” he said. “I like that. Brief is good.”
Emma hid a smile. “I’m sure we have a good translation. I’ll have it sent to your room, shall I?”
“Oh, I won’t need a translation,” he assured her. “I don’t know any other languages.”
Emma decided it would be useless to explain that Montaigne was a sixteenth century Frenchman. “I see. What room are you in?”
Nicholas frowned in concentration. “Ophelia, or something like that.”
“Westphalia?” Emma guessed.
“That’s it.”
“Then I will send Montaigne to Westphalia.”
Nicholas laughed. “Well, if the Westphalia won’t go to the Montaigne…”
Emma did not like puns. Like Voltaire, she thought them the death of wit. But she managed a weak laugh. “Shall we move on?” she quickly suggested, taking his arm.
Chapter Four
“We have so many treasures here at Warwick, I hardly know where to begin,” she said smoothly as she led him back out into the brightness of the corridor. “My father-in-law, the ninth duke, was an avid collector of fine porcelain, I seem to recall. Do you like porcelain?”
“We always made do with crockery on board,” he said apologetically. “The captain did have a you-know-what with Bonaparte’s face at the bottom, now I think of it. I’m pretty sure that was porcelain. I shouldn’t have said that,” he added, catching sight of her startled face. He turned beet red. “Forgive me, ma’am! I’m afraid we sailors are a rather coarse lot.”
“Not at all,” she said faintly. “It was very amusing. Perhaps you would like to see some of our paintings?” she suggested as they walked. “We have a very good collection of the Flemish masters, and a rather important Raphael.”
“I love paintings,” he told her. “My father was an artist.”
“Really?” Emma began, breaking off as she caught sight of a group of officers at the other end of the hall. “Let us go this way,” she said, hurrying into another room. “As you can see, we have quite a few paintings in here,” she said, closing the door behind them. “Portraits, mainly.”
She looked around the room, puzzled. She could not recall seeing it before. The walls were paneled in green silk. The wainscoting was painted a dazzling white. There was no place to sit, but a big round table stood at the center of the room, supporting a tall vase of hothouse flowers. The windows faced full west. Other than showing off a few dozen overly large portraits, the room seemed to have no purpose at all.
“My father did portraits,” Nicholas said, looking up at a life-sized portrait of a Restoration gentleman wearing a long curly brown wig and scarlet knee breeches. “Who’s he when he’s at home?” he asked her, laughing.
“That would be King Charles the Second,” she told him. “Did your father ever paint anyone famous?”
“No,” Nicholas said, chuckling at the very idea. “Mostly he did miniatures of people, sailors mostly, on bits of ivory. The sort of thing a man sends to his sweetheart when he goes to sea,” he added, coloring faintly.
“Oh, how lovely,” said Emma.
“My father was disowned when he married my mother,” Nicholas told her. “She was not considered good enough, I suppose, for the younger son of an earl. My father couldn’t afford to paint big canvases after that. I remember his last painting. He couldn’t pay our rent. He had to give it to the landlady at the Barking Crow. She hung it in the taproom, though,” he added proudly.
“It