My Dear Duchess

by M C Beaton

  “What can I do?” she asked suddenly.

  “Leave it to me,” he rejoined with a smile of satisfaction. “I will tell you when the time comes how to play your part. The lawyers told me that under the terms of the will, Westerland must be married within the month. Therefore, I should think the so-happy couple are not in love.”

  “Of course not,” spluttered Clarissa. “Why, only last week he proposed to me and was rejected. I… I left him on his knees and he was crying and…”

  He interrupted her rudely. “If we are to deal together, there must be no lies between us. I have some small acquaintanceship with the Duke and, for all I wish him harm, I know he is the last man to cry over anything, even rejection by such a diamond of the first water as yourself.”

  Clarissa looked at him sulkily. “Well, he was not exactly crying, but he did propose.”

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Ferrand, “We progress amazingly. Now, for the moment, go back and congratulate your young sister as prettily as you can.”

  Clarissa stared at him, “I confess I do not understand how I became involved in this conversation in the first place.…”

  “To harm your victim you must first get close to him… or her.” He leaned forward and stared into her eyes with a peculiar intensity that was almost hypnotic. “Now, you will do exactly what I say.”

  Clarissa was suddenly frightened. She did not know what on earth she was doing discussing insane plans of revenge with a virtual stranger. With a mental wrench, she turned her face from his and rose to leave. Only a few feet away from her was Frederica on the arm of her Duke. She was laughing at something he had said and gazing up adoringly into his face. Clarissa found that she was trembling with rage and jealousy. Not pausing for any further thought, she tripped forward lightly and flung her arms round the surprised Frederica.

  “Darling Frederica, I am so pleased for you but it is the gentleman who is to be congratulated. Am I not right, Your Grace?” Her beautiful face was alight with happiness and good humor. His Grace found it almost impossible to imagine that this was the girl who had rejected his offer so vindictively. He looked at her in some surprise and Frederica, with some trepidation.

  “You must let me help you choose your bride’s clothes,” she prattled on to Frederica. Clarissa was suddenly conscious of the approving stares of several of the immediate guests and became positively radiant. She chattered lightly and easily and then departed after giving her stepsister a farewell hug. Over Frederica’s little shoulder, Clarissa looked across into the eyes of Mr. Jack Ferrand. As he gave a slow nod of approval Clarissa experienced a slight shiver of fear that she had committed herself to some game even more dangerous than the ruin of Frederica’s marriage.

  The carriage rattled over the cobbles on the rode back to Hartford Street. Emily sat opposite Frederica, slumped ungracefully against the squabs, the dashing young lady of the earlier evening having been undoubtedly transformed back into a pumpkin. Emily had been in high alt at the unexpected attention paid to her—particularly by Lord Hefford. But Lord Hefford had unaccountably neglected her towards the end of the evening to pay court to that upstart, Clarissa Sayers.

  For once unaware of her new friend’s distress, Frederica chattered happily about the ball until she noticed her fiancee stifling a yawn. He smiled his apologies at her. “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening to you, Frederica. God. I’m tired. What a curst dull evening!”

  Poor Frederica. The glittering evening of her engagement, her gown and jewels, her meeting with the Prince Regent—all shattered like fragile glass and lay in ruins at her feet.

  In the darkness of the carriage, she surreptitiously wiped away a tear. In all her excitement and joy of the evening, she had forgotten that, to the Duke, it was just a tedious legal move to be endured to secure his fortune. She became as miserable and silent as Emily and it was a sorry pair of damsels who trailed into the Cholmley home.

  Since the Cholmleys rarely entertained, the small drawing room with its spindly, shabby furniture always smelled of damp and disuse. The bulbous eyes of the Cholmley ancestors, who all appeared to have suffered from goitre, seemed to follow Frederica as she walked slowly into the room, goggling and damning this miserable product of the mushroom middle-class.

  “I’ll leave you two,” said Emily abruptly. “Not as if you need a chaperone now you’re engaged.” With that she strode from the room, her long, mannish strides at odds with the remains of her new-found elegance.

  The Duke looked thoughtfully at his fiancee. She was staring down into the empty fireplace with her face turned away from him. He felt suddenly at a loss as to what to say. Perhaps she was already worrying about the more intimate side of marriage. He had better set her mind at ease.

  “Frederica,” he began, addressing her unresponsive back, “we have not had time until now to discuss our marriage. I wish to assure you that I will keep to the idea of this marriage of convenience at all times. You may have your friends and amusements and I promise not to interfere.”

  She still remained with her face turned away from him so after a moment’s hesitation he went on. “I planned that we should spend our honeymoon at Chartsay which will be our country home. You shall have your own apartments of course.” He felt as if he were putting it badly, but goaded by her lack of response continued with, “You shall not be troubled by me in any way. In our peculiar situation, it is not necessary that we… er… we be intimate as man and wife.”

  Frederica had been so delighted in her new freedom at escaping from Mrs. Sayers that she had thought life would go on like a story book. Henry would fall in love with her, the marriage bells would ring and life would stretch out in one long happy road. She realized with an odd maturity that nothing she could do would force this man to fall in love with her. She could only behave lightly and happily and hope some-how that the miracle would happen.

  She forced a smile on her face and turned round. “How serious you are, Henry. I am not worried about the terms of our marriage. I am only a little tired.” But Frederica could not resist just a little dig. “Getting engaged seems to be an everyday affair for you. Curst dull, you called it, if I remember rightly.”

  His thin face flushed under his tan. “I did not mean that, Frederica. We are friends, are we not? I would as lief be married to you as to any other girl in London. There!”

  This was said in a gentle, affectionate voice, and with that Frederica had to be content and cease dreaming that one day his eyes would burn with the fire and passion that they once held when he looked on Clarissa.

  Chapter Five

  “I really fail to understand you, Mrs. Sayers,” said Mrs. Byles-Bondish. “Apart from a singular outburst of hysterics over Frederica’s wedding which, by the way, was a resounding social success, you no longer seem to care a rap for her.”

  Mrs. Sayers sulkily jabbed her needle into a tired piece of petit point and did not deign to answer.

  “Further,” pursued Mrs. Byles-Bondish, “I find it odd that when the girl ran away from home, however much it was glossed over by Mrs. Cholmley’s belated invitation, you did not turn a hair or call in the Runners.”

  “She is an odd child,” snapped Mrs. Sayers. “When we were in Harrogate, she was always escaping from the house. I am well rid of her.”

  Mrs. Byles-Bondish shook her head in amazement and appealed to Clarissa who had just come into the room after driving with the Honorable Jack Ferrand. “Dear child! Do speak to your obstinate mother. She will have nothing to do with Frederica and as Duchess of Westerland the girl holds a powerful social position which could be of inestimable value to you.”

  “I do not need help to attract suitors,” said Clarissa.

  “That I grant you,” said her mentor. “But with the exception of Mr. Ferrand, your suitors are not exactly of the first stare. The Marquis of Blandhaven has a doubtful reputation to say the least. The Westerlands will be entertaining at Chartsay. It is of the first importance that you invite yourselves for a visit.
”

  “Toady to that chit? Never!” declared Mrs. Sayers.

  Mrs. Byles-Bondish smiled thinly. “I should also conceal your very unnatural feeling toward Frederica,” she advised.

  Clarissa unexpectedly came to her aid. “I declare I miss my little sister,” she said in a sweet voice. “Do let us go to Chartsay, mama. They say it is prodigious grand. Would you not like to stay in an abbey?” she wheedled.

  Her voice oozed charm but Mrs. Sayers heard the hint of steel in her daughter’s voice. To refuse would be to endure one of Clarissa’s famous tantrums.

  “Oh, very well,” she said, giving in with bad grace.

  Mrs. Byles-Bondish smoothed down her serviceable walking dress and tucked an errant strand of grey hair under her feathered bonnet. Her long nose quivered in distaste as she surveyed the loud stripes of the drawing room. She, for one, had every intention of cultivating the new Duchess. She wondered fleetingly how Frederica would fare in the magnificence of Chartsay. Then, with a feeling of relief, she left the Sayers’ mansion.

  She would not have been very surprised to know that at that moment Frederica was feeling completely bewildered and that she had a feeling that her husband was overawed by the first sight of Chartsay as well.

  The old abbey had been redesigned and rebuilt in the Eighteenth Century by James Wyatt, an architect who favored the gothic style. It looked for all the world like a huge sprawling castle with its multitude of towers and battlements in mellow Portland stone.

  To Frederica’s bewildered eyes, the park seemed as large as a whole country. She had never felt so small or insignificant in all her life.

  All the staff, from the Groom of the Chambers down to the small knife boy, were lined up in the great hall to greet them. Steward, wine butler, under butler, housekeeper, bakers, housemaids, footmen, coachmen, porters, and odd men all bowed and curtsyed to the newly-married couple. There must be about a hundred, thought Frederica, and that was not counting the forty gardeners and forty roadsmen.

  The Groom of the Chambers was so awful and magnificent that she felt at one point that he must be the old Duke himself and that the whole affair was a mad farce. His name was Mr. Jeremiah Lawton. Tricked out in livery adorned with so much gold braid, he would have outshone an Admiral of the Fleet, he punctuated all his remarks with a resounding thump of his tall cane. By the end of the introductions he had disdainfully managed to convey by his attitude that he considered the new Duke and Duchess mere upstarts and interlopers in his house. He was fat and white like a species of insolent slug and his sister Rebecca, who acted as housekeeper, was no better.

  The steward, a middle-aged man called Benjamin Dubble, appeared mercifully pleasant and open-mannered. He begged a few words in private with the Duke who was about to suggest that Frederica retire to her rooms and make herself comfortable when the Groom of Chambers, Mr. Lawton, said in a high, pompous voice that Mrs. Lawton, the housekeeper, would take Her Grace on a tour to familiarize her with the workings of Chartsay.

  Frederica opened her mouth to protest that she was too tired but her husband looked pleased and nodded his approval.

  Tired though she was, Frederica soon realized that Mrs. Lawton was deliberately making her tour of Chartsay as confusing and as long as possible. Nothing was left unvisited from the bedrooms to the laundry room. She spoke in accents of stultifying gentility and ignored Frederica’s every hint that her lecture should be cut short.

  On the ground floor, almost the whole of the main block was occupied by living rooms. There was a dining room, drawing room and library, all on a scale suitable for a house which was likely to fill its thirty or so guest bedrooms with house parties. There was also a small billiard room and breakfast room. A huge conservatory led west from the dining room to the chapel, concealing the equally enormous servants wing from the garden. The north-west wing was a family one into which they could retire for privacy or when the house was empty. Frederica’s bedroom was next to her sitting room and had long French windows opening onto the terrace where several aristocratic peacocks screamed all night long as if their necks were being wrung. The Duke’s dressing room was across the corridor from Frederica’s apartments and opened into a large study.

  Frederica’s courage fell before the grandeur of it all. She felt like a provincial imposter but parried all Mrs. Lawton’s delicate probings as to her background and how long she had known the Duke. From the various portraits on the wall and from the old-fashioned toys in the nursery, she was able to conjure up a different picture of Chartsay, one crowded with guests and the noisy laughter of children instead of all this stiff and formal elegance, glittering and waxed as if encased in glass.

  “It looks like a museum!” she burst out.

  “But then,” replied the housekeeper inspecting her keys, “Your Grace has not been used to anything in this style before.”

  Frederica knew this to be an unpardonable piece of impertinence but she was tired and had not the courage to rebuke the older woman.

  At last she was set free to enjoy the solitude of her apartments.

  The long curtains of her sitting room moved gently in the summer breeze. She crossed to the long windows and passed through them onto the terrace. Huge urns of roses decorated the stone balustrade. A hazy golden light swam over the long green lawns making the woods in the distance shimmer and dance. She took a deep breath of the clean country air scented with mown grass and roses and felt her optimism returning.

  The park was dotted with temples, obelisks, seats, pagodas, rotundas, reflecting pools and two ornamental lakes, each with its fishing pavilion strategically placed on an island in the middle.

  Frederica experienced the beginnings of a feeling of pride. All this was hers to share with her husband. She had a longing to see the gardens and park thronged with happy faces and the formal elegance of the rooms warmed by dancing and music. She was so carried away with this vision that she swung round to meet her husband who was coming along the terrace and threw her arms around him. This was noticed by the steward’s room boy who told the third footman who told the under butler and from there it moved upwards to the august ears of the Groom of the Chambers who sniffed and inferred that he expected nothing better from that class of person.

  “Henry, Henry,” Frederica was crying. “Do let us have a drum.”

  He ruffled her curls absent-mindedly and a frown creased his forehead. “I must say it would be a splendid idea. But I am having difficulty with Lawton. All he seems to do is thump that cane of his on the floor and tell me that the old Duke would never have done this and the old Duke would never have done that. All, mark you, with an undertone of veiled insolence.

  “I do not want to offend the old servants with any unheaval but… dash it all. There’s a whole army of them. They could cope with a royal visit let alone a drum! But I will consult Dubble, the steward.

  “But first, we must prepare for dinner, my dear.”

  “How old-fashioned,” exclaimed Frederica. “It is only three o’clock.”

  “The old Duke,” said Henry, imitating Lawton’s mincing, high-pitched voice, “always had breakfast at nine-thirty, dinner at four and supper at ten, Your Grace. So there! And here am I, lord of all I survey, agreeing meekly to dinner at four when I am not even hungry. Well… we shall start our innovations tomorrow. Dinner, by the way, is in the state dining room because…”

  “The old Duke always took his meals there,” giggled Frederica.

  He gave her a quick hug. “Get dressed quickly and we shall face the horrible Groom of the Chambers together!”

  Three quarters of an hour later, their Graces faced each other down the enormous length of a dining table laden with plate. They were attended by Lawton, the butler, the under butler and eight footmen. For most of the long and heavy meal, Frederica kept her eyes on her plate, raising them occasionally to look nervously at her husband. Frederica had never imagined such a thing as an almost tangible atmosphere of insolence… but there it was. All the
staff were correct as to looks and manners, but they showed their disdain in infinitessimal ways—an eybrow raised a millimeter, a slight twitch of the lips. “It is almost,” she thought, “as if they are waiting for me to eat peas with my knife!”

  At last the long meal was over and the Groom of the Chambers drew back Frederica’s chair to conduct her to the drawing room and so leave His Grace in solitary splendour to enjoy his port.

  An icy hush fell over the room as the Duke seized the decanter and two glasses with his own hands and said cheerfully to his wife, “We need not stand on ceremony tonight… particularly on our first night here. I shall join you.”

  They walked arm and arm through the disapproving silence, through the anteroom and into the drawing room where Lawton gave his cane a final thump on the floor and left.

  The Duke looked like thunder. “I was a fool! Damned jackanapes. In future, when we are alone, we shall take dinner in my study at seven. Furthermore, you shall have your drum. The local county will be calling tomorrow to pay their respects. Invite who you will and as many as you like.

  “They must learn that we are in command here. You must get used to issuing orders as well, my dear.”

  Frederica was too timid to tell him that the very idea of ordering Mrs. Lawton about terrified her.

  He stretched one slippered foot towards the empty fireplace and shivered. “We need a good blaze here to warm us. What a vast place this is!” A sea of blue carpet seemed to stretch on into infinity. Various Westerlands stared down at them in the gloom from their gilded frames. Small islands of tables and chairs were grouped at various points in the large room. The Duke tugged the bell and told the answering footman to “make up the fire.”

  “An’ please Your Grace,” he said, “the old Duke…” and then cowered before the blaze of wrath on Henry’s face.