Free Reprise by Joan Smith Page A

the second volume aside, his face set in a rigid mask of fury. So this was the mystery of her having given Murray a manuscript and not wishing to tell him about it! This was why she had been distraught in the study-- and saying she had never seen the book! How she must have been laughing up her sleeve! While he had all but idolized her, writing the finest poems he had ever written in her honor, she had been wallowing in this muck. Making him a laughingstock, and herself a saint. She must have thought she had well and truly lost him, to have pulled this stunt. This was her payment for Cybele, and Cybele was in the book to the life, with her platinum curls tarnished to copper. Her sweet smiles, her joy at winning him back--how to explain that? She’d rather have a real live marquess than mere revenge, perhaps. She had used a pseudonym in case he was fool enough to come trotting back to her. There’d be no going back after this. Even a mutt--how dare she call him a mutt!--would not grovel this low.
    In his anger he pulled the two books apart and flung them into the cold grate, then fished in after the pieces, reading the loose pages again, with a new shot of anger at every line. He didn’t bother with the farce of going to bed. He changed into morning clothes and went to Hettie’s a good four hours before she was likely to have her head off the pillow. His message to her dresser was violent enough to insure his being received bright and early this morning. She greeted him from her bed, still wearing her cap and an elegant but garish peach satin jacket, dripping with lace.
    “You didn’t have to wake me from my sleep to tell me the news. I know you and Prudence are reconciled, love. Just tell me the date of the wedding and let me get back to sleep,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
    “Wedding be damned! Get into your turban, Het, and you’ll be in on the execution!” he said sharply.
    She rubbed her eyes again, looking at him with the dawning of a brighter interest. “What has the silly girl done now? Don’t tell me she doesn’t like the house, after the ten dozen shops you dragged me into to pick out all that stuff.”
    “It is a matter of the most complete indifference to me whether Miss Mallow cares for my house. After you’ve scanned this piece of libel you’ll see what I mean.” He threw the two dismantled books at her, their spines broken, the sheets tumbling out all over the counterpane.
    She picked up one of the green covers and read it. “Jane White. Pray, what is a Miss Jane White to us, Allan?”
    “Alias Miss Prudence Mallow. Look at it! Look at what she has had the damnable gall to publish! Not only me, oh, no, she included you in her tirade too, Het. ‘Lady Maldire’--that is you. A nice touch, don’t you think, ‘Lady Curse’? Only, of course, with her usual ignorance of French she has got it wrong. It ought to be ‘Maudit’
    “Has she written about me, the minx?” Hettie asked, snatching up pages at random and scanning them for a “Maldire.” Like so many fashionable fribbles, she couldn’t have cared less what was said of her or written, so long as something was. She found herself soon enough. “Lady Maldire, whose greatest labor in life was to vary the color of her gowns and the height of her lovers... Oh!” She looked at him, feigning horror, secretly thrilled to death. She was soon rummaging about in the heaps of paper for more “Maldires,” and finding a sufficient quantity of them to keep her happy, reading each aloud to Dammler, who was all but frothing at the mouth.
    “What should we do about it?” he asked Hettie, pacing the floor and urging her to get up. “I have a good mind to sue. That would stick Murray with the settlement I expect. Not that he will escape scot-free, either. He knew what she was up to, well enough, probably urged her on to it. And telling me this was the first work of a new writer! But it’s not his fault of course, primarily. This is her