An American Duchess

by Sharon Page

  She was strapped in, which had saved her life. But now he had to get the buckle undone. He had to do it fast. He could smell fuel. They were one hundred yards from the house. Shouting sounded around him—indistinct.

  Goddamn belt. He couldn’t get it free. He tore at it wildly—stupid thing to do. It got him nowhere. He had to work logically, carefully. He didn’t care if the fuel exploded and took him. But he had to save Zoe. He loved her so much.

  He pressed close to her, trying to ensure he didn’t hurt her. He couldn’t see where the belt fastened—he could do it only by feel. Forcing his brain to work fast, he remembered how he had done it up in the passenger seat of her other aeroplane.

  It released.

  He lifted her, drawing her out and putting her over his shoulder. Then he ran. Toward the house.

  He waved the shocked, startled, curious, shouting people—his family, the servants—to go back. “The fuel is leaking. It will explode. Get back!”

  There was a roar and a great wall of hot air shoved him forward. He fought not to let it throw him to the ground so he wouldn’t hurt Zoe. He stumbled to his knees. There was another sound—of bursting glass as windows on the main floor of the house blew out in the shock wave.

  Was anyone hurt in the house?

  “Oh, my heavens, is she all right?” It was Julia, dropping to her knees at his side as he laid Zoe on the grass.

  He didn’t know. All along, he’d assumed she was unconscious. Gently, he put his hand to her throat. Nothing. Christ, no. No—

  No, there. He felt the beat of her pulse.

  He met Julia’s terrified eyes. “She’s alive. I don’t know how badly she’s injured. I have to get her inside.” He turned finally to see the devastation behind him. The wood-and-canvas plane was being eaten by flame. The lilacs were on fire, their blackened leaves curling up and floating into the sky.

  Men of the estate were running toward it. Some had buckets; others carried brooms and blankets to beat out the flames.

  “I have to get her inside. Stay with her while I deal with the fire. We have to fetch the doctor.”

  It was then he heard the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. Softly, Zoe’s voice came from below. “Nigel?”

  “Zoe. Dear God, Zoe.” He was afraid to move her, and when she struggled to sit up, he put his hand gently on her chest and bent close to her. “Lie still. I’ll get you into the house. Do you hurt anywhere?”

  “My face. It stings. My arm—I think I hit a branch as I shielded my face. And my stomach. My stomach hurts. I slammed forward into the controls—”

  But the belt had held her in. It had to mean she wasn’t badly hurt. Dear God, it had to.

  “My stomach. Oh, God. Oh, Nigel. I forgot— Oh, God, the baby.”

  Baby? Was she confused? Delirious and thinking back to the awful night when they’d lost their son?

  “I didn’t tell you. You must tell the doctor. I was pregnant again. What if the baby is not okay?”

  Her eyes closed, and she fainted with her hands clasped in his.

  He’d never felt anything like it. She was pregnant again. She’d flown while pregnant—maybe she had been planning her trip around the world, ignoring his objections.

  And so he wouldn’t stop her. She just hadn’t told him. He shook with fear and rage.

  Christ, none of that mattered now. He lifted her carefully and carried her into the house.

  * * *

  Zoe sat up in her bed, propped up by a half dozen pillows in silk cases. Callie had fussed over her, dressing her in a satin nightgown with a feather-trimmed peignoir. It was two days after the crash and she didn’t care what she wore.

  Dr. Drury had come to check on her. “Feeling better, Your Grace?”

  It was so hard to speak she had to shake her head first. “I lost the baby, Dr. Drury. Today I felt the same gushing sensation. A lot of blood came out.”

  “Then I am afraid you probably have lost the child, Your Grace.”

  Drury was a direct man. There was no denying the truth. No trying to ease her guilt. “It was the crash, wasn’t it?” she asked, her heart hollow.

  “It may have been the shock. It might have been an injury you sustained during the crash. Or it may have been destined to happen anyway.”

  “I was so foolish. After the last time, I should have been more careful.”

  Tactfully, he said nothing, of course. Then he said, “It may have made no difference.”

  “Perhaps my body is not able to bear a child.”

  “It is far too early to say that yet. To reassure you, Your Grace, these miscarriages may have no bearing on your ability to have healthy babies—and many of them. I have known women to have several miscarriages, then go on to have three or four children. Or more.”

  “Thank you.” She couldn’t bear to hear any more. Nigel had left her alone after Drury’s first examination of her when she was still in and out of consciousness. She had slept so much in the past two days. If Nigel had come to see her, it was while she had been sleeping—

  “Dr. Drury, can I speak with you before you leave?”

  Husky, raw, it was Nigel’s voice. He stepped into her room. His face was so pale it was stark white and his eyes were dark wells of shadow. “How is the duchess faring?” Nigel asked.

  “Much better, I believe.” Drury looked to her. He closed his leather bag and looked at her. “What I recommend is rest. I am sure you want to protest, Your Grace. I know you did not like to stay abed last time, but you have been through an ordeal and you need to give your body and your mind time to heal.”

  “Last time.” Nigel’s jaw hardened before Zoe’s eyes. A pulse beat in his temple. She saw the twitch.

  The doctor left and Zoe heard feminine voices in the hall—Julia, the dowager and Nigel’s mother all speaking to him. She looked into her husband’s ice-cold blue eyes and she felt a spurt of fear. She didn’t fear that he would strike her. Something far worse was going to happen.

  “You lost a child again,” he said.

  His voice was flat. Devoid of emotion. Once she hated it when he was icy. Now she knew she was to blame for his cold, hard iciness. She felt such crippling guilt it made her nauseous.

  “I need to speak to Drury before he leaves. Then I’ll return,” he said.

  Her husband closed the door behind him. She dropped her face into her hands.

  He was back in moments. Raking his hands through his blue-black hair, he stalked back and forth at the foot of the bed. “Why, Zoe? Why fly when you knew you were with child? After losing our first child, how could you have put the second at risk?”

  “I didn’t think there would be any risk—”

  “You didn’t care if there would be risk. I know why you did it.” His face looked as if it were carved from stone. But his jaw twitched. “I looked at the notes in your writing desk. The letters you put in there, the notes you made in your journal. Your plans for your attempt to fly around the world. I told you to stop and you didn’t. You were planning to do it while pregnant. What did you plan to do—hide this all from me? Damn it, Zoe, how could you do this to me?”

  “I wasn’t going to fly around the world. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I realized I couldn’t do it. And once the child was born...I knew I wouldn’t want to leave for months to fly. I would want to be here for every minute with our daughter or son. But I wanted to make one last flight. I had planned the changes to the plane and I was so proud of them, and I wanted to fly it one last time before putting it away for months. Then the engine failed. Yes, I did continue my planning, but I had made the choice to stop today. And you—you read my letters and my journal. You pried into my private things.”

  “I am your husband.”

  “You act like my jailer more than my husband. I am sorry I crashed
my plane. Sorry I lost our child. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” She was shrieking at him.

  The more shrill and desperate she became, the icier and more withdrawn Nigel looked. “Then I’m sorry, too, Zoe. I’ll leave you to rest, as the doctor said.” He turned toward the door.

  “No! You’ve hurt me and upset me and you have to stay and have this fight with me. You can’t hide from emotion this time, Nigel. I won’t let you—”

  But he walked through the door. She was going to slip out of bed and chase him, but her legs felt too shaky.

  She flopped on the bed. They had been rebuilding a tenuous relationship again after losing one child. What would happen now that they’d lost two?

  He blamed her for losing this child. Yes, she’d been rash to fly. Yes, she’d been consumed by her yearning to do something remarkable. But it wasn’t wrong for her to want to achieve something. It wasn’t.

  * * *

  He hadn’t felt like this for a long time. Not since he had first been on the battlefields on the Western Front and had seen the carnage. Not since his brain had almost imploded from the insanity of sending young men out to run at machine gunners.

  The hot rage he’d felt at the beginning of the War quickly froze over into a cold, empty sense of loss. With each day, he’d grown icier. But now the pain coursing through him was hot. Fiery hot and burning him on the inside.

  Nigel poured a tumbler half-full of brandy. He threw the full contents down his throat. It was like using gasoline to quench a fire.

  God, how could she have taken such a chance? Why hadn’t she told him about the baby? Why had she kept it a secret from him?

  You have kept secrets from her—when she begged you to reveal them.

  He poured another drink and tried to use it to silence the voice in his head. But it didn’t work. He had to keep his secrets from her.

  But she had not wanted to share the news of a baby with him.

  God, why had she flown that blasted plane? He’d had the windows repaired the day before and the wreckage of the aeroplane cleared away. The burned lilacs had been cut down. But he would never forget. Never...

  God—

  “Your Grace.”

  He spun and snapped at Bartlet, “What in hell is it?” He tasted brandy in his mouth—it tasted sour now. Instant contrition hit him. “I apologize, Bartlet. My nerves are— I am on edge.”

  “I understand, Your Grace. I apologize for the interruption, but there is a gentleman on the telephone. Lord Steward. He asked to speak to you at once.”

  Steward was a friend of Nigel’s former superior in the War, Brigadier Arthur Stanley, who had since inherited his family title and had become Lord Durham.

  Frowning, Nigel went out in the hallway and picked up the phone. “Langford here,” he said quietly.

  “Langford,” shouted a loud, serious voice. “This is Steward. I am telephoning you about Durham. He’s been shot and killed. By a female named Lily Bell. The girl had been writing him letters, blaming him for her brother’s execution for cowardice. I believe you know something about this girl.”

  “Wait, Steward—” Nigel felt as if the floor had tipped. “Lily Bell murdered Durham? Are you certain of this?” The girl had been upset. She had written angry letters. She had disappeared. But this—

  “It appears to be so.”

  Appears. “What happened to the girl?”

  “She has vanished,” Steward said. “She has not been home to her family for weeks—”

  “I know that. I have had investigators searching for her. Is it certain she’s the one who shot Durham?”

  “Durham’s secretary seems to believe it is,” Steward answered. “He claims he heard the girl shouting at his lordship. Shrieking like a banshee with rage. He went in to get the girl out, and when he opened the door she was shouting that she would shoot Durham. Durham was sitting in his chair behind his desk, white as a sheet. He tried to capture her, but she ran out. The secretary—his name is Goodeve—heard a sound like a shot that night. He was up late, attending to paperwork. Found Durham again in his study, dead on the floor.”

  “Was there a witness to the actual shooting?”

  “No, Langford, there was not. Has to have been the girl, though. Had an argument, made threats, was on the scene. And now she’s done a bunk.”

  “That is not evidence, Steward.” That was what Zoe would say, with her American defiance over things she felt were based on the English class system.

  “There is a hunt on for the girl, of course,” Steward said. “Since you have been looking for her, you will be of use. Can you come down to London?”

  “Now? Hell, not now—” Nigel broke off. He had to know what had happened. If Lily Bell had done this...it was because he had not prevented her brother’s execution.

  This was his fault, damn it. He should have been able to find her when she left her home. Stopped her from doing this. Durham—a good man—was dead.

  His hand shook. “I cannot come to London yet. Damn it, I will come when I can.” Christ, he needed to help Lily. He should be here for Zoe. But he didn’t know what to do for Zoe. And he was filled with anger. Maybe it would be best to be away from her.

  * * *

  The quiet of the house pressed on her. Zoe couldn’t stand it anymore. The servants spoke in hushed whispers around her room. When Julia or Nigel’s mother came to see her, they used the tones you did with someone who was dying.

  Zoe called her mother in New York and told her that she had crashed her plane and had had another miscarriage. Mother had been furious, of course.

  “If you keep pushing him, keep hurting him, you will lose him. You are a duchess, Zoe. It’s your duty to give him a son. For God’s sake, do that for him.”

  She had hung up. She was tired of fighting everyone.

  She got up and put on a jumper of light gray wool and a plaid skirt. In front of her vanity mirror, she pulled her comb through her limp and lifeless hair. Hollow eyes stared back at her. The woman looking at her looked so much older. As if each loss—her unborn children, her brother, her father, Billy’s beloved—had carved wrinkles in her face and washed the sparkle from her eyes.

  She supposed that was exactly what had happened.

  She walked through Brideswell and maids said, “Good morning, Your Grace,” in sad and subdued voices. Warm sunlight spilled through the two-story-tall windows into the foyer, but Zoe shivered.

  Once she would have thought of flying or driving to ease the pain in her heart, but she couldn’t face flying. She walked into the drawing room. There was a decanter of sherry, favored by the dowager. She thought of using a glass to try to help her.

  Then she saw something else. The perfect thing. The thing she needed.

  She set it up as quickly as she could. Within seconds, the bright, vibrant tones of a song burst into the heavy silence of the room. She closed her eyes and twirled around the floor and let the music lift her heart. The song was fast and light and she bit her lip. Even though tears leaped to her eyes, she knew she needed more jazz. She plucked another recording from the stack.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” The words were barked at her from the doorway. “I was in my study when I heard this—this racket.”

  Zoe turned, the record balanced between her fingers and the cardboard sleeve. “I just wanted to put on some music. The silence in this place... I know everyone is being kind and concerned, Nigel, but it’s like a tomb. I feel like I’m being crushed alive.”

  “You can’t possibly want to listen to music.”

  “I do.” She put the second record on the phonograph and dropped the needle on it. Music swelled. Nothing bright and sparkling this time. This song was gentle and sad and soft, and she moved to it.

  Nigel stalked to the gramophone. She reached out to stop him, whi
ch only made him work faster. He wrenched the needle from the record, scratching it. Destroying it.

  “This is wrong,” he snapped. “How can you enjoy yourself now? How can you damn well want to dance?” He held the ruined music in his hand.

  Zoe shook. Could he not even let her grieve as she wished? “I have to listen to music,” she said, her voice cool. She was too tired for shouting, for passionate arguments. They had changed. Now he was filled with hot anger, and she could not express any emotion at all. She was drained of all emotion.

  “I like to listen to music, even when I feel sad,” she said. “It lets me touch every one of my memories and hold them close. It lets me cry.”

  She was tired of fighting over every little thing, of carrying the weight for the loss of their baby. For this one was her fault—she knew he thought that. He avoided her, after all.

  She snatched the record from his hands and she broke it in hers. She threw the pieces to the floor. “Fine. There won’t be music. You’ve taken that from me. When will you have taken enough that you’ve evened the score?”

  He walked away from her without a word. Without giving her an answer.

  Two days later she discovered he had sold her airplane—her first one—while she’d been recuperating. And he had sold her motorcar.

  * * *

  Two footmen carried a trunk down the stairs.

  “What is going on?” Nigel demanded of the servants who were quietly grunting while struggling to balance the load of the trunk.

  The man carrying the back of the trunk, the newest footman, stared at him in confusion. “Her Grace. Wants the Daimler brought around. Mr. Bartlet told us to hurry up with her trunks.”

  Nigel took the stairs two at a time and found his wife in her bedroom. She wore a coat and skirt that reached far above her knee and a bright pink cloche hat.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home. Where I can listen to a recording if I want. Where I can drive a car without feeling that I’m a vile monster. I am going back to New York.”