Flowers From The Storm Read Free Page B

gambler, a womanizer, a patron of creaturely arts—painters and musicians and novelists—transparently referred to as the D—- of J———- in the scandal sheets, where he and his various exploits appeared with frequency.
    She had made it her business to find out about him. Not to put too fine a point upon it, he was a rakehell.
    It wouldn’t have made any difference to Papa if the man had been a cowherd; the talent was all that mattered. But Jervaulx was a duke, a fact of which Maddy was reminded much more frequently than her papa—to be precise, every time she sat awaiting Jervaulx’s royal convenience in his breakfast alcove.
    And now, having agreed two months ago to co-author this paper with her father and even condescending to offer to make the preliminary presentation himself at the monthly meeting of the Analytical Society, Jervaulx had apparently forgotten all about it and couldn’t even be bothered to finish the last crucial step in the calculations.
    At least, she hoped he had forgotten, for she had a niggling fear that he might be playing some horrid joke upon her papa. Her worst nightmare was that Jervaulx would come to the Analytical Society with some of his shocking friends, perhaps under the influence of drink, bringing along unsavory women, to make her father and all the members of the Society the object of public ridicule.
    She had no real reason to suspect that he would do so, but at best her papa was going to be painfully disappointed and embarrassed in front of his mathematical fellows by the duke’s absence, all on account of an aristocrat who was too indolent to live up to his commitments to anything but debauchery. For Jervaulx, this was a mere pastime. For her father, it was lifeblood itself.
    She marched up the steps beneath the portico of the white town house, almost of a mind to send in, along with her father’s polite and diffident inquiry, a note to the duke containing her own sentiments.
    Despite the fact that she had never once discovered in her soul the boldness to stand up and speak out in the silence of her own Meeting, she was quite certain that it would not frighten her in the least that he was a duke. It would not bother her at all to speak to him—an indication in itself, she felt, that what moved her met with God’s full approval. On the grounds of the biblical spiritual equality of man, she felt that anything which might lay the duke’s iniquities before him in a calm and convincing manner must only do him good.
    But Calvin was smiling as he ushered her in, and picked up a flat leather case from a table right in the hall. He held it out to her. “To be presented to Mr. Timms, by means of Miss Archimedea Timms, with His Grace’s compliments,” he said. “The duke has instructed me to impart to Mr. Timms that His Grace will be attending the meeting of the Analytical Society tomorrow night in the company of Sir Charles Milner, and looks with anticipation upon the forthcoming introduction.”
    Maddy took the satchel into her hand. “Oh,” she said. “He finished.”
    Calvin made no sign of noticing her surprise, but stood with his head tilted expectantly toward the breakfast room. “Would you like chocolate, Miss?”
    “Chocolate?” Maddy gathered her thoughts. “No. Indeed, I won’t be stopping. I must convey this to my father directly.”
    “As you say, Miss.”
    Such a sudden and unexpected attention to his promise by the heedless duke left Maddy rather at a stand, and somehow more vexed than pleased. Odious man, to tumble everyone into a topsy-turvy state of suspense and then think that he could put all to rights merely by consorting with President Milner and finishing the differentials at the very last moment.
    “Plainly I tell thee, Friend,” she said in the stern accents she’d prepared to use to the duke himself, “I hope that Jervaulx has sufficiently prepared his discourse. I’m afraid there won’t be time now for my father to offer any