The Disdainful Marquis Read Online Free PDF Page A

health was vigorous and two great events changed the course of her life forever when she contemplated her seventh decade.
    First, George died, and she noted his absence more than she had ever noted his presence. And secondly, nature at last blessed her with beauty. It was nothing short of miraculous, almost like the transformation of a plain window pane after frost has touched it in the night. For age came to the Duchess of Crewe and brought a great transformation overnight.
    It turned her gray-speckled mouse hair to the color of silver. It hollowed her cheeks, turning mere leanness to high imperious cheekbones. At last, her unfortunate nose found a face that it fitted, and, thinned down, it stood high and hawklike, a perfect object for two glittering myopic eyes to peer down over. Her rigid, angular body suited an old woman to perfection: In youth it had been awkward, in her dotage it was imperial. Her height was no longer uncomfortable; it became regal. She had been an unobtrusive woman; she was now an imperial old woman. Nature kept its promise at last.
    For the first time, Mary, Duchess of Crewe, excited attention and admiration when she entered a salon. Strangers in the street glanced at her. She was an ornament at the theater. No one ever again forgot her after an introduction. When she appeared, heads turned, and the gentlemen showed her every courtesy. Even the greatest arbiters, the other society matrons, deferred to her. At a great age, the duchess suddenly discovered all the unfair advantages of physical beauty. But equally suddenly, it was not enough.
    Much as a born actor after his first taste of applause, the duchess discovered the one ingredient that had been missing in her flavorless life: attention. And as much as she received, it was not enough.
    It was only an unsatisfactory brief shower, falling after a long parched life. She wanted more than a taste of it. Now, at a time when many of her contemporaries were content to settle back and watch others live their lives, she wanted to begin hers. She wanted to bask in that rare and lucent light that had always eluded her, the full glare of public attention. But there were impediments.
    She was aged, she was female, and she was alone. Her children had all grown, married, and presented her with batches of uninteresting descendants. She could not look to them. She had few friends, and no close ones. And none of them could have given her what she wanted.
    She was done with tea parties and tame entertainments. She sought glory. It hardly seemed fair or just that now that she had been presented with a new face and a new aspect, she should languish in obscurity. She felt as a young girl might when her body ripened to a woman’s, that there was an attractive stranger within her that she must introduce to the world.
    She had heard of the sort of life one could lead if one were wealthy, titled, and attractive. She had heard of, but never seen, the gambling establishments, the fast parties, the masquerades and travel adventures of those select few who cared for nought but pleasure and excitement. And knew that as a duchess she could have entrée to any of them, once. But that there would have to be something special about her to permit her constant presence.
    It was a set, she had heard, made up of the cream of the gifted: the poets, the musicians, the authors, the intellectual, the beautiful, and the amusing wealthy eccentrics. She had now presence, beauty of a sort, and wealth. She would have to see to the rest.
    Her first companion was a Lady Wiggins, a noble woman who had fallen upon hard times. Together they had traveled to Bath and to Brighton and had received an invitation to a house party at the country seat of a notoriously rakehell lord. All that she had heard was true. She found excitement, gaiety, amusing company, and a sense of privilege. She was accepted, admired, but then, ultimately ignored. For she had no special cachet, no entertaining conversation, no