More Than a Mistress, Chapter Seven

I have not been very disciplined about these recaps.  Shame on me.  I have already had to renew the book from the library TWICE, which is sort of appalling, because who takes nine weeks to read a romance novel?  Apparently, I do.  Anyway, on with Chapter Seven!

The Duke's rehabilitation, and Jane's employment, is halfway over.  Jane dreads leaving Dudley House in only a week and a half, especially since she knows from overheard conversations that the Earl of Durbury is still in London searching for her.  But there are other things to dread as well, namely the fact that "[the Duke] saw her as a woman, and she, God help her, was very much aware of him as a man." 

The Duke commands Jane to show him her hands, and as she feels "the pull of his masculinity" he notes that her hands are smooth with no callouses.  Another bit of evidence that she is not the middle-class servant she presents herself to be.  The Duke doesn't even seem surprised - he just goes into a little speech about her hands: "They are beautiful hands, as one might expect.  They match the rest of your person.  They change bandages gently without causing undue pain.  One wonders what other magic they could create with their touch.  Jane, you could be the most sought-after courtesan in all of England, if you chose."  I'm guessing this is not usually the way one talks to one's servants, but then again, the Duke has pretty much concluded she isn't actually a servant girl.  Still holding onto her hands, his eyes "burn[ing] upward into her own," (that sounds painful), he asks if she can play the piano.  Jane feels trapped but is determined not to show it: she reflects that "by just a slight jerking on her hands he could have her down across him in a moment."  Down across him!  Oooh, titillating!  Jane just might feel more "aware" of him if she suddenly found herself across his lap.

Jane admits that she has played a little, and he insists that she demonstrate.  She does.  He orders her to come sit with him and then gives his feedback on her performance.  "You play without flair.  You play each note as if it were a separate entity that had no connection with what came before or after.  You depress each key as if it were simply an inanimate strip of ivory, as if you believed it impossible to coax music out of it.  You must have had an inferior teacher."

Jane bristled at this insult to her teacher, who was (unknown to the Duke, of course) her beloved mother.  She describes her teacher as someone who "could make it seem as if the music came from her rather than from a mere instrument ... as if it came through her from some - oh, from some heavenly source."

If it seems like I'm quoting a lot of stuff about playing piano, that's true, but there's a reason for it.  The book-related reason will become obvious soon, but the me-related reason is that I am a singer from a family of musicians and I was impressed by the Duke's comments on musicality.  It would have been easy to just bluster on about Jane's playing being terrible without actually giving the reasons why; it also would have been easy to have the Duke say all kinds of reasons why, but for those reasons to not make any kind of sense.  Balogh nails it here, giving real feedback that actually would make a piano performance pretty unspecial.

A few days later, the Duke is going crazy not being able to move around, so he decides to get himself crutches.  This is at least partially due to his finding out that he is the subject of gossip, and not for the usual reasons: the Forbes brothers - brothers of Lady Oliver, the woman the Duke supposedly slept with, prompting the duel in the first chapter - are making noises about defending their sister's honour, and claiming that the Duke is only pretending to be wounded, because he is afraid of fighting all of them.  The Duke finds himself reflecting that "there was something remarkably silly and meaningless in his whole style of life," he concludes that the solution to this is not to try and find some meaning, but to get out "and back about his usual activities," to save his sanity.  All this damnable thinking can be depressing!  He is already learning how to make conversation with a woman, for pity's sake!

Then who should arrive but Lady Oliver herself!  "Bloody hell!" the Duke roars, realizing that "she had come at a time when half the fashionable world was out and about and might happen by and see her or evidence of her presence," such as Lord Oliver's town coach which is parked outside the Duke's bachelor abode.  He is about to order his servant to kick her out, when Lady Oliver sees herself into the sitting room and greets him "in a sweet, breathy voice."  Oh, suddenly I know why she's here!  It's to make Jane jealous so she will realize that she wants to sleep with the Duke!

Lady Oliver wafts through the room (yes, wafts) and raises a handkerchief to her lips and generally plays the part of a woman of sentiment who is in great distress.  This is similar to the way Lady Heyward acts, all hysterics and goings-on, and I suppose these two characters are meant to show how different Jane is by merit of not being a feather-brained doofus.  No wonder the Duke doesn't make conversation with women, if this is what women are usually like. 

The Duke gives Lady Oliver quite the cold shoulder despite her fawning, and then tells Jane to show the Lady out.  Lady Oliver tries to get the Duke to admit he has been pining for her, as she has for him, but he cruelly comments that he hasn't spared her a thought in weeks, and he will continue to spare her no thoughts once she is gone.  She tells him that her brothers mean to kill him, and then bursts into tears.  "You are hard-hearted, Tresham!" she wept.  "I thought you loved me."  Then she leaves, "in a tragic performance that surely would have brought whistles from the pit of any theatre."  Hee!  Balogh knows how to bring a laugh.

The Duke immediately asks Jane her opinion of his "paramour".  Jane says that she is lovely, but that the Duke needn't have been so cruel to her.  "You lay with her and made her love you.  But now you have spurned her when she braved propriety in order to come and see you and warn you."  But remember, the Duke doesn't believe in love! He replies, "The only person Lady Oliver loves is Lady Oliver.  And she braved propriety so that the beau monde will believe that she and I are [...] continuing our liaison."  Then he asks her how she became so convinced that he slept with Lady Oliver.  Well, he DID just call her his paramour, but apparently that doesn't mean anything.  "Did I [confirm it]? Or did I just allow you to make the assumption?"  This is the second time he has made comments about sleeping with Lady Oliver, and then tried to make Jane think that he didn't sleep with her, or at least that he didn't SAY he slept with her.  Not that he cares what she thinks, of course: "To deny it would be to give the impression that your good opinion matters to me, Jane.  I could not have you believing that, could I?"  Well then, you COULD stop talking about it.  Just a thought.

But Jane is starting to wonder, now.  If you didn't sleep with her, she asks the Duke, "why did you not deny it?  Why did you fight a duel and risk death?"  The answer, the Duke tells her condescendingly, is that a gentleman should not publicly contradict a lady.  When she quite correctly points out that this is ridiculous, that he is letting fashionable society believe the worst of him, the Duke replies, "But they love me for it.  I am the bad, dangerous Duke of Tresham.  How I would disappoint the ton if I were to insist [on my innocence].  I often flirt with married ladies.  It is expected of me."  This is starting to be a theme, the Duke's need to uphold a reputation not as an individual but as his title, the Duke - a title and reputation owned by his father and grandfather before him.  He's starting to seem like kind of a bitter dude, all this sneering and posturing, all because it's expected of him.

Also, I looked it up and ton means high society.  You're welcome.

So the Duke and Jane have some more verbal sparring, and then he uses the word "Please" and also calls her Miss Ingleby instead of Jane.  Then he wonders, "Why had it seemed so important to him, despite his denial, that she know the truth about Lady Oliver?  Why had he wanted Jane Ingleby to know that he had never bedded Lady Oliver? Or any other married lady, for that matter?"  Well, we readers know why.  BECAUSE ROMANCE NOVEL, that's why. 

By the way, Jane still doesn't know 'the truth'. She thinks he is lying to her so that he can laugh at her naivete.  Way to communicate, romantic hero.

Next chapter is the one that I predicted would see intimate physical contact.  Will it happen?  Stay tuned.