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his fossil,” she whispered back.
     
    Helena made a sound halfway between a snort and a suppressed burst of laughter.
     
    Venetia’s anxiety doubled. She’d rather hoped Helena was still a virgin. Not that one trickle of laughter would settle the question, but that Helena understood the joke so immediately, when some of their maiden aunts would need a diagram, perhaps several diagrams …
     
    The introduction concluded. The duke took to the podium. He spoke with a measured cadence, a spare use of words, and, unlike the man who preceded him, the discipline to meander not an inch from his topic.
     
    He was brilliant, which would no doubt please Helena. His ideas were controversial—chief among them that the driving force behind evolution was more likely to be natural selection, as Mr. Darwin had proposed, and not the more commonly accepted theories of neo-Lamarckism,orthogenesis, or saltationism. Yet his delivery was almost impersonal, as if he were merely relating the thoughts of a third party and not his own.
     
    But there was a charisma to him that held the audience in his thrall, a pull greater than the sum of his cogency and his good looks. Perhaps it was his very civil haughtiness, the unmistakable authority to his voice, or the combination of his ancient title and his very modern endeavors.
     
    At the end of the lecture, a series of questions came from the men in the audience, some of whom were members of the Harvard faculty, some, members of the press.
     
    Venetia reached across Millie and handed Helena a piece of paper. “Ask him.”
     
    To be the first woman to ask him a question would leave an impression on the duke.
     
    Helena looked down at the question Venetia had suggested:
What do you think of theistic evolution, sir?
“Why me? You should do it.”
     
    Venetia shook her head. “I don’t want him to think I’m too forward.”
     
    But before she could further push Helena, an American young woman rose from the audience.
     
    “Your Lordship.”
     
    Venetia winced at the incorrect use of the duke’s title. A duke was never “my lord,” but always “Your Grace.”
     
    “I read with great interest your article in
Harper’s Magazine
,” continued the young lady. “In the article you briefly tantalized readers with your view that human beauty is also a product of natural selection. Would you care to elaborate on that?”
     
    “Certainly,” said His Grace. “From an evolutionary point of view, beauty is nothing more than a signifier ofone’s fitness for reproduction. Our concept of beauty derives largely from symmetry and proportion, which in turn denote structural health. Those features we find most pleasing—clear eyes, strong teeth, unblemished skin—represent youth, vigor, and freedom from disease. A man who is attracted to young, healthy females is more likely to breed than one who is attracted to elderly, sickly ones. Therefore, our view of beauty has undoubtedly been influenced by millennia of successful selections in the past.”
     
    “So when you see a beautiful woman, sir, is that what you think, that she is fit for reproduction?”
     
    Venetia’s jaw slackened. Americans had such phenomenal cheek.
     
    “No, I rather marvel at the homage we pay beauty—it is fascinating for a man of science.”
     
    “How so?”
     
    “We have been taught from birth to judge one another on character. Yet when faced with beauty, everything goes out of the window. Beauty becomes the only thing that matters. This tells me that Mr. Darwin was exactly right. We are descended from animals. There are certain beastly instincts—the attraction to beauty, for example—that are primal to our makeup and override the markings of civilization. So we romanticize beauty, out of embarrassment that we should still be so susceptible to it in this day and age.”
     
    The audience murmured at his unconventional and very decided views.
     
    “Does this mean you do not enjoy beauty, sir?”
     
    “I