The Portrait of a Duchess by Scarlett Peckham

Seraphina, Elinor, and Thaïs stared at Cornelia, rapt, as she concluded the tale of her marriage. Even Seraphina’s baby seemed fascinated.

“So you married Goodwood,” Sera said. “And then what happened?”

Much.

But she would spare them that aspect of the story.

Spare them, and spare herself, for if she was going to spend a fortnight or more with Rafe, it would not do to linger in her memories of the past.

It was too tempting to focus on the good ones. And she’d never been much of one to deny herself temptations.

“I never saw him again,” she said. “Until this afternoon.”

“What was it like to see him?” Sera asked. Her voice was rather delicate, as if she gleaned that Cornelia was holding something back.

Confusing. Unnerving—

“Sexual, I reckon,” Thaïs supplied, with a firm nod of the head and a wink at Cornelia.

“Pardon?” Cornelia and Elinor asked in unison.

Thaïs rolled her eyes. “Excuse me, dearlets, but I saw him in the flesh. If I’d been in a room alone with him, he’d not have kept his breeches on for long.”

Cornelia was not going to discuss Rafe’s breeches. It was not good for her to discuss Rafe’s breeches.

“I am far too delicate for such coarse talk,” she sniffed, in her best imitation of the drawing room damsels with whom she’d grown up.

“Oh, you’re not,” Thaïs crowed. “Not with him built like a stallion. You too, Sera. If you weren’t pledged to Adam you’d climb him like a tree.”

“I would never climb a Tory like a tree,” Sera retorted.

“He claims his association with Tories is driven purely by pecuniary interest,” Cornelia said. “He no longer needs their money, being a duke.”

“And you believe him?” Sera asked.

Did she? She certainly did not trust his motivations. But she’d never known him to be an outright liar. His crimes were of betrayal, not dishonesty.

And there had been a time when he’d been reformist in his views. Was it possible he was being truthful when he said they hadn’t changed? He was still a scoundrel for putting coin ahead of principle, but she did not need to admire his ethics to profit from the plan they had agreed upon.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I have chosen to withhold judgment until I can get to Gardencourt and see for myself. He is having a house party, and I have agreed to join him in exchange for his agreement to host our exhibition.”

Sera stared at Cornelia over her nose. “You talked Goodwood into hosting the most reviled portrait series of the century?” She glanced over at Thaïs. “Perhaps she did climb him like a tree.”

“I did indeed. Talked him into it, that is, not climbed him. Can you imagine the scandal? A duke hosting a showing of my paintings? At my uncle’s house? It’s nearly too good.”

Elinor looked unconvinced. “The irony is diabolical, to be sure. But I thought Goodwood had turned his back on the reformist cause. Why is it, do you think, he has agreed to this?”

She didn’t know. She couldn’t account for it herself.

But the claim piqued her curiosity. For all it had unsettled her, she’d never had a more intriguing afternoon.

She shrugged. “If it seems Rafe has some nefarious purpose, I’ll simply leave.”

She hoped she wouldn’t have to. In part because she could nearly taste the revenge against her uncle. And in part because if Rafe wasn’t lying—if he was not the scoundrel he had seemed—she might feel better about having chosen him to be her husband all those years ago.

She prided herself on her sound judgment and ability to read people. She’d always harbored a private shame that she’d been so wrong about him.

“I think it’s worth the risk,” Seraphina said. “If all goes to plan, it will be a vindication to use your uncle’s bastion of supposed morality as the locale for your most scandalous exhibition.”

“Rosemere deserves it,” Elinor said with an uncharacteristic edge to her voice. “I only regret he could not be alive to squirm and seethe at the obscenity.”

Elinor knew, more than anyone, how badly Rosemere had hurt Cornelia.

He had raised her from the time she was orphaned as a baby. Though he was childless, having lost three wives, he’d told her once that he considered her his own daughter.

And she’d believed him.

She’d enjoyed the role of pampered ducal ward, as any young girl would when made the princess of a charmed life. When her uncle’s third and final wife had died in childbed, she’d assumed the role of the miniature lady of the house, and managed it with the ease of a girl raised to nobility.

Until, in the space of a single afternoon, Rosemere had turned on her as if she were no more to him than a maid who’d shattered an heirloom vase.

His love had been conditional.

Just like that of every man she’d ever known.

If they could not control you, shape you into what they desired you to be—you were not worth the ground on which you stood.

It was better to hold one’s feelings in reserve than to risk that kind of pain.

Thaïs snapped her fingers in the air, thoroughly delighted. “Your rotten uncle will rot faster in his grave because of this.”

“He will. And your revenge will be just the kind of thing you’re famous for,” Sera said. “The kind of statement that will stir up the papers to no end.”

Cornelia laughed, picturing the scene. “When I imagine his precious ballroom filled with loose women and people of color and liberals and so-called seditionists . . .”

She had a thought. What if the ballroom were not merely filled with the types who made up her circle of friends and acquaintances?

What if the scandal were even bigger?

Rafe had said he was planning to reveal their marriage at a masked ball. Cornelia could hold a masked exhibition the same night, in the same place.

The events could be one and the same.

“Ladies. I think I have an idea,” she said. “Rafe wishes to reveal our marriage at a masquerade ball before the ton. What if it were to be the same event as the exhibition?”

Everyone in the room looked at her quizzically. Not least Lucius, though he always looked somewhat quizzical.

“What do you mean, dear?” Elinor asked. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“We could make the Jezebels exhibition a masquerade as well, and hold back the location until the day before, so the invited guests don’t realize they’re going to Gardencourt. Meanwhile, the ton could be invited for a masked ball at the same time. No one will have the opportunity to piece it together. The guests will all arrive in masks—half expecting a grand celebration, the other half expecting licentious art. And then, when Rafe reveals my identity, I’ll reveal the portraits. The aristocrats will be horrified when they learn they are guests of my infamous exhibition, and my patrons will be so delighted by the scandal they’ll pay double.”

She watched the expressions on her friends’ faces take on the singular sharpness that came with plotting wicked intrigue.

“Oh my,” Elinor breathed. “That could just work.”

“The portraits will sell for hundreds, for everyone will want a memento of the night of scandal,” Seraphina said. “People all around the country will want a look. Collectors will be salivating.”

It was true. Splendidly, gloriously true.

“And with that and my inheritance, we may just have enough money to begin construction on the Institute,” Cornelia said.

“I can’t believe it is happening so quickly,” Elinor said. “Not a year ago it was only an idea.”

“Such is the power of angry, clever women, Ella,” Seraphina said to her baby, tapping the child on the nose.

“Not to mention brave ones,” Thaïs added.

“Will you come to Gardencourt and help me with the preparations?” Cornelia asked them. “We won’t have much time to make arrangements, and it will take some clever planning to achieve. Besides, I still must finish your portraits.”

“I love a duke’s house party,” Thaïs cawed, fluffing out her hair. “One of my favorite ways to pass the time.”

“I’d be curious to see Gardencourt again,” Elinor said. “It’s been decades since I last set foot there.”

“I’ll do anything you need, Cornelia,” Sera said. “Always.”

How she loved these women. Who else could she confess her deepest secret to after twenty years of lying, only to receive compassion, abiding loyalty, and a willingness to travel to the countryside?

“Then it’s settled,” Cornelia said. “We shall create all manner of mischief.”

Sera raised her teacup. “To bacchanalia,” she said.

“To bedlam,” Thaïs echoed.

“To the power of the Society of Sirens,” Elinor said.

They clinked their teacups.

As Cornelia sipped her tea, she smiled.

For perhaps Rafe Goodwood appearing in her painting studio was not the crisis she had thought it was.

Perhaps there were worse things than marriage after all.