Page 7 of The Duke of Cups (The Highwaymen #3)

“I DON’T KNOW why you’re asking me this,” said Rutchester, who was cutting into a sausage. It was mid-morning, and they were eating at an inn nearby to Bess’s, since they’d spent the night there last night.

“Well, I’m not asking you as you,” said Dunrose.

“What?” said Rutchester.

“I’m asking your general opinion of what a normal man might want,” said Dunrose.

“And why would I know that?” said Rutchester. “I personally don’t understand why anyone wishes to have a wife.”

“Oh, me either,” said Dunrose, making a face. He took a bite of beans from his plate and swallowed it down with some tea.

“Well, I suppose people want children,” said Rutchester. “Primarily.”

“Right and not really because they like children per se, but because they want heirs.”

“Yes, someone to pass down their wealth and titles.”

“It’s more than that, I think,” said Dunrose. “It’s some reason for existence in a way. Someone to do it all for .”

“Hmm,” said Rutchester. “Perhaps.”

“But we do everything for Champeraigne, of course, so no reason for any of that.”

“Well, people like wives for other reasons besides the fact that they are essentially heir makers,” said Rutchester.

“Yes, I suppose, but you can do that better with strumpets,” said Dunrose.

“Can you?” said Rutchester.

Dunrose eyed him. “Now, let me just ask you, is it true you’ve never done it, or—”

“I’m not answering that,” said Rutchester, glaring at him.

Dunrose looked around the inn and decided he didn’t fancy paying extra money after Rutchester destroyed their plates and cups and the table and chairs besides, so he decided to drop it.

“Apologies. Back to this hypothetical. Truth is, I’m not even sure about the strumpets.

I feel, if you become too comfortable with the strumpets, they’re just like wives. ”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you start worrying about them, and wondering about their well-being and the well-being of their families and things, and it just taints everything. How do you become aroused for someone you care about, after all?”

“I have no notion what you’re even speaking of.”

“Right,” muttered Dunrose. “Well, this is neither here nor there, is it? I’m getting nowhere. Why won’t anyone marry her? If you were normal, you know, like other men, you’d marry her, right?”

“This is Miss Thomas?”

“Yes, this is what we’ve been speaking of all along!”

“I don’t think it is what we’ve been speaking of,” said Rutchester.

“Answer the question.”

“Would I marry her?”

“Yes, if you weren’t you, I mean.”

Rutchester thought about it. “So, you mean, would other men marry her?”

“Yes,” said Dunrose.

“Well, erm, what do men like about wives, really?”

“I don’t know. This is what we’re trying to determine.” Dunrose felt frustrated.

“Hmm,” said Rutchester, running a hand through his long hair. “All right, yes, let’s think this through. What men what with wives. Besides the obvious, because they can bed other women.”

“Right,” said Dunrose. “Though I suppose it’s good if it’s pleasant to bed your wife, since you are going to have to.”

“Yes, if you want heirs,” said Rutchester. “Miss Thomas is, erm, well, there’s nothing wrong with her. She seems to have a woman-shaped figure and her face is pleasing—”

“All right, enough of that,” muttered Dunrose.

“Enough of—”

“Unless you want to marry her? Would you marry her? That would make everything easier, wouldn’t it?”

“No, I’m not getting married, Dunrose.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to… do anything with her, just take care of her. That’s all she wants.”

Rutchester squared his shoulders. “No.”

“No?”

“Why don’t you marry her? You were joking about it.”

“Oh, you started that,” said Dunrose. “I don’t know, I suppose I could.

” He thought about that. “I mean, perhaps it’s the easiest of solutions, really.

I suppose I was going to get married someday, just many years from now, perhaps ten years, fifteen years…

I’d be old for it then, but men wait sometimes.

Anyway, I could marry her, and I suppose it would be fine, in the end.

Just… fine.” He considered her. She was pretty enough, and she actually had pert little round breasts and he liked the hint of her hips and arse that he could see through her dresses.

He wouldn’t mind fucking her, not that he had really minded fucking anything he’d ever fucked, no matter what she looked like.

Fucking was fucking, right? He cleared his throat.

“Well, we’ll consider that as a last resort, then, I suppose.

If I can’t get anyone else to marry her, I’ll just marry her myself. ”

“Seems easiest,” said Rutchester.

“True,” said Dunrose. “But we’ve gotten nowhere. Men want wives for fucking. For children. What else?”

“Well, I think they also like them to look pretty.”

“Right, and not to just be sexually appealing, but to be, you know, nice to look at in the way a table is nicer with a vase of flowers in the midst of it than without.”

“Just so,” said Rutchester, nodding. “Yes, and if they have pleasant skills, it’s much the same. If they can draw or play the piano-forte or recite poetry or what-have-you.”

“Women as pretty ornamentation, yes,” said Dunrose. “And in our class, a woman should be able to host a dinner party, throw a ball, run a household, keep an array of servants in line, all of that. But I’m sure that isn’t a problem for Miss Thomas. They teach girls that sort of thing.”

“Yes, they do. They’re all the same, really, in that way,” said Rutchester.

“Yes, they sort of blend together,” said Dunrose. “The singing and covering screens, too, all their accomplishments. Just… who cares?”

“Well, no one does,” said Rutchester. “Men don’t care about that kind of thing, not really. Although, I suppose, if someone has a wife who’s really good at something, if she can sing like an angel or something, there’s a bit of a desire to show that off.”

“Good point,” said Dunrose. “I shall ask her if she has any special talents.”

“Otherwise, it all seems rather arbitrary,” said Rutchester.

“We should be asking our married friends, obviously,” said Dunrose. “Why did Arthford marry his wife?”

“Oh, that’s obvious. She’s a sort of fantasy woman, like the kind of thing you think about when you stroke yourself before bed.”

“Oh, you do that? I thought maybe you—”

“Shut up.”

“I don’t think she’s that fantasy-inducing, although I suppose trading her virginity for a deed is sort of salacious.”

“Exactly,” said Rutchester. “Besides, it’s like with whores.”

“What do you know about whores?”

“Men are very good at convincing themselves that they are the one man who’s actually good at making whores feel pleasure. ‘With everyone else, she’s faking it, but with me?’ ”

“That is not…” Dunrose cleared his throat. “All right, well, I’ve never thought that with a whore, and I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” He said this rather too forcefully. Rutchester was a tad too insightful for a man who knew nothing of women.

“She was that sort of woman,” said Rutchester, “and Arthford convinced himself that with him, only with him, she actually liked it.”

“Well, I think she did,” said Dunrose. “Besides, who knows what the marchioness taught him to do anyway. Maybe he really is skilled.”

“Is there actually skill to sex, though?”

“Spoken like a virgin.”

“I’m just saying. Animals seem to figure it out, don’t they?”

“Why am I talking to you?”

“Anyway, look, Arthford and his duchess, they’re no help. They’re some kind of special case. And Nothshire, he’d say that he just fell helplessly in love with his duchess, don’t you think? He took one look at her and he was desperate for her, had me kill her husband and everything.”

“Yes, you’re not wrong,” said Dunrose. “It’s some sort of thing, a thing that people who are normal, not like us, feel, I think. I suppose you might call it falling in love.”

“You’ve never fallen in love.”

“I used to. Don’t anymore. Burned it right out of myself. It was annoying. What’s wrong with you?”

“I think someone burned it out of me before I could try it out,” said Rutchester.

Dunrose’s heart went out to the man, a sudden twist of a feeling in his chest. He knew better than to let it show or to reassure the man, but he thought again that his experience with his own father really hadn’t been so bad, in the end. Rutchester had been tortured, twisted, fucked up .

“Don’t,” muttered Rutchester.

“I wasn’t!” Dunrose was chagrined. “I was trying not to, anyway.”

“I’m better off, I think. Love is weakness. ”

Dunrose lifted his tea cup. “There we are agreed.”

Rutchester lifted his own cup. “Indeed.”

Dunrose clinked his tea cup against Rutchester’s and drank. Then he sat the cup down. “What’s become of us, toasting with teacups over breakfast? I think we’re getting old.”

“We’re also scheming about how to marry off some girl,” said Rutchester. “I think we might be getting womanish.”

“I was always womanish.”

“Well, no argument there.”

Dunrose laughed and Rutchester did too.

“The problem is,” said Dunrose, “how do I make someone fall in love with her?”

“You likely can’t,” said Rutchester. “That’s just happenstance.”

“All right,” said Dunrose. “So, instead, I need to just trick someone into marrying her.”

“Seems easier,” said Rutchester with a nod.

“WHERE IS THE carriage, mon chaton? ” Seraphine settled down at the table for luncheon the next day.

“In the stables?” said Hyacinth, pretending to know nothing.

“No,” said Seraphine. “What’s more, the groom in there said it never came back last night.”

“Well, no one was in there when I arrived. I didn’t know what to do. I called out for someone to help and no one arrived, so I left it there with the driver and the footman. I assumed they’d see to it.”

“The driver and the footman are nowhere to be seen either.”

Hyacinth shrugged. She knew better than to provide any theories. Feign ignorance and wait and the other person will provide a theory for you.

Seraphine shook her head. “You don’t think the driver and the footman made off with the carriage, do you? And the horses?”

“I suppose it’s possible,” said Hyacinth. “But they didn’t seem the type.”

“What is the type?” said Seraphine. “Is there a certain sort who steals horses?”

“Thieves come in all shapes and sizes, I suppose.”

“Quite true,” said Seraphine. “Oh, I can’t believe we’ve lost the carriage. When my husband hears of this, he is not going to be pleased.”

“I suppose I should have remained with the carriage and made sure—”

“Oh, no, you did nothing wrong. It’s just impossible to get good help these days,” said Seraphine.

“It definitely is,” said Hyacinth. Well, at least she would not be blamed for the loss of the carriage.

She spent the afternoon thinking about the dead driver and the dead footman, who had done absolutely nothing wrong except to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And, truly, they likely would have been let go if she hadn’t recognized Dunrose and been so vocal about it. Their deaths were on her head.

She felt guilty about that for quite a number of hours, until she realized it was not truly her fault at all. She had not pulled the trigger. She had not been the one so cavalier about human life.

No, indeed, the blame must be laid squarely on the dukes’ shoulders, who were the worst sort of people.

And now she was entangled with them. She supposed that it was just another reason to be sure to play along as it came to Champeraigne, for there would be no real concern about ending her. Her life was on the line.

God in heaven, she was in a very desperate situation, was she not?

She often felt as if she was always in a desperate situation, as if there was never anything except choices between very bad decisions laid in front of her. This was more of the same.