My Dear Duchess

by M C Beaton

  Now instead of boxes from the dressmaker, boxes of books appeared from Hatchard’s in Piccadilly. The other world held between the book covers removed her temporarily from the bitter reality of her own.

  But time had passed and the nightmare of the Comte’s perfidy had begun to recede. The little she saw of her husband was at least enough to convince her that he certainly did not seem to hate her. In fact, he hardly seemed to notice her at all.

  She began to wish she had confided in him. But she had since learned that ladies of the ton did not casually accept invitations to drive out unescorted unless they were setting up a new flirt. The more she reviewed her behavior, the crazier it seemed… and the crazier the Comte seemed. Perhaps there had been no plot against her at all and the Comte had simply been deranged. In a tranquil world composed of eating, sleeping, and reading, Frederica barely saw a soul, although sometimes Mr. Pellington-James dropped by to take tea, patently sad that the dashing Duchess showed no signs of dash any more.

  He had decided to court Clarissa who was once again the reigning belle of the London scene, but she had laughed at him so cruelly that he quickly retired from the lists.

  One wintry afternoon, when Frederica was happily esconced in front of a blazing fire in the library, Mr. Pellington-James positively burst into the room, triumphantly waving two tickets.

  “Now you have got to come out of seclusion,” he cried. “I have purchased—at great expense, mind you—two tickets to see Romeo Coates.”

  “Who on earth is Romeo Coates?” asked Frederica, putting down her book with a reluctant sigh. “A prize fighter?”

  Chuffy raised his eyebrows and his hands in horror. “You have been out of the world too long. Romeo Coates. Diamond Coates. Curricle Coates. The Gifted Amateur.”

  “What a lot of titles the gentleman seems to have amassed,” interrupted Frederica. “Who is he?”

  “He is the newest rage,” cried Chuffy. “He is playing Romeo at the Haymarket tonight.” He went on to explain that Romeo Coates was in fact a Mr. Robert Coates of the West Indies who had achieved such fame in the part of Romeo that he had become known as Romeo Coates. He was one of the most famous sights of Long Acre as he flashed past in his scallop-shaped chariot, bedecked in furs and diamonds. Chuffy had gone through extraordinary machinations to procure the tickets. She just had to come.

  Frederica hesitated. She had never seen Shakespeare performed on the stage although she had read almost all his plays during the last few months. But with a new-found awareness of the necessary proprieties attached to the title of Duchess, she said tentatively, “I do not know whether I should accept. My husband is at home and…”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Chuffy. “Met Henry on the way in and told him about it. He lets me call him Henry, you know. And he said he had no objections to me squiring you.”

  “Really? I have indeed a sweet and understanding husband,” said Frederica acidly.

  But Chuffy was impervious to sarcasm. “Good! That’s settled. I have bought a whole new outfit for the occasion. You won’t be able to believe your eyes.”

  He was right—Frederica could not believe her eyes when Chuffy proudly presented himself in the drawing room that evening.

  He was dressed from head to foot in white silk. He wore a white silk jacket, white silk waistcoat and white silk knee breeches. Diamond brooches and buckles were pinned indiscriminately over his large form, and he wore a heavy powdered wig. He looked like a heavenly footman.

  Frederica, who had been untroubled by eccentricity when she had been cutting a dash in town, now felt unaccountably shy. She had not wanted to be so noticeable on her first evening back in society. But Chuffy looked so radiantly pleased with his appearance, she had not the heart to disappoint him. With an innate sense of style she realized that if she dressed as extravagantly as Chuffy, he would somehow appear less ridiculous.

  Chuffy had arrived early so she urged him to wait while she changed.

  The Westerland family diamonds, reset and cleaned, had been presented to her by the Duke—that is, thought Frederica wryly, if one could consider handing them to the butler with a curt note, presenting them.

  She chose an as-yet unworn ballgown of white silk with a silver gauze overdress and allowed her maid to clasp the heavy diamond collar round her neck. Her hairdresser redressed her hair in a suitable style to set off the little fairy-tale diamond tiara.

  Chuffy’s eyes misted over with tears when he saw her. “Oh, wait till Lord Sackett sees us,” he gasped. “We shall be the cynosure, my dear Duchess.”

  But startling as their appearance was, London Society was not far behind. The little theater was ablaze with jewels sparkling on men and women alike. It was packed to capacity and Frederica noticed with surprise that the rowdier of the Corinthian set had turned out in full force. She was puzzled. They would surely have been more at home in the cock-pit than at the performance of a Shakespeare play. Yet after Mr. Coates’ first entrance which was greeted with tumultuous cheers and cat calls, she began to understand why.

  He was a most ridiculous, if magnificently dressed, figure.

  He wore a species of silk, woven so as to give it the appearance of silver, and he was plastered with diamonds. He appeared inordinately fond of his legs which were encased in pink silk stockings. He kept holding up the action of the play by walking to the front of the stage to present his legs to their best advantage.

  Such of the lines as she was able to hear above the noise were new to Frederica. “I do not recognize it,” she whispered to Chuffy. “Is it not Shakespeare then?”

  Chuffy whispered back that Mr. Coates had said that he knew the Shakespeare play by heart but had been reported to have remarked airily, “I think I have improved on it.”

  He had a most peculiar accent. Perfect was pronounced “purfet”, burden “barden”, and memory “memmary”.

  He was mercilessly heckled by the boxes and would select the noisiest of his tormentors by pointing straight at their box and delivering himself of David Garrick’s famous lines:

  “Ye bucks of the boxes who roar and reel,

  Too drunk to listen and too proud to feel.”

  Frederica was beginning to wish she had not come. The noise became deafening as a chorus of cockcrows arose from the pit. The unfortunate actor had chosen as his crest a cock with outspread wings and the motto, “While I live, I’ll crow.”

  At the interval, Frederica saw Emily and her fiance Archie Hefford in one of the boxes opposite. She would have gone to visit them but Mr. Pellington-James advised her to stay. It was getting very rowdy, he told Frederica, and he wished he had not brought her. He, for one, could not understand the rude behaviour of the audience. Romeo Coates was the finest actor he had ever seen. Why… there was the Duke!

  A moment later, poor Chuffy could have bitten off his tongue. He began to say that he had been mistaken but Frederica had already spied her husband in one of the lower boxes along with the fair charmer at his side. The girl was as young as Frederica but as blonde and beautiful as Clarissa.

  The curtain mercifully arose again and she turned a rigid face to the stage. Her nightmare had just begun. Mr. Coates, it seemed, approved of the diamond-covered spectacle presented by Chuffy and Frederica, and played all his lines to their box. As Chuffy had promised, they were indeed the cynosure, but not in the way he expected.

  The play survived into the fifth act when the sight of Romeo trying to break into Juliet’s tomb with a crowbar proved too much for the audience. Some women laughed so much they became hysterical and had to be carried out.

  At long last, Romeo decided to die. He carefully dusted the stage with his handkerchief, spread the handkerchief out carefully, placed his expensive hat on it, and deigned finally to lie down on the stage.

  This was greeted with a great ironic burst of applause whereupon Romeo solemnly rose to life, advanced towards the orchestra with a smug smile, and carefully arranged his legs in what he considered was their b
est position. Then he returned to die again, this time over the body of the unfortunate Juliet who was crying gustily with humiliation despite the fact that she was being paid double to endure the ordeal.

  The curtain at last swung down and the house lights were lit. Of the Duke and his fair partner, there was no sign.

  The couple made their way back to Grosvenor Square in silence. Chuffy felt terribly guilty. Lord Sackett had told him that Romeo Coates was the best actor in the world and now he felt he had been made a fool of, though, for his part, he could see nothing wrong with the fellow.

  He stole a cautious look at his young companion. What on earth had made the Duke turn up at the play with that lightskirt? And he knew that Frederica was to be there—Chuffy himself had told him.

  Frederica was terribly angry. When she considered the incredible effort it had taken her to go about as if nothing had happened after the Comte’s abduction in order to protect the name of Westerland, and when she considered the long restless nights of nightmares where the Comte’s green eyes had come to haunt her, and all to be suffered alone, she felt like strangling the handsome Duke.

  Giving poor Chuffy an abrupt goodnight, she swept into the mansion only to find that her husband had not yet returned. “When His Grace returns,” she told the startled butler, “please inform him that I am in the library.”

  Still dressed in her finery, she ordered the fire in the library to be made up and prepared to wait.

  It was three o’clock in the morning before the Duke fumbled his way into the hallway of his home. Worthing, the butler, informed him in hushed tones that Her Grace was waiting for him in the library and watched with anxious eyes as His Grace tacked across the hall in that direction.

  The Duke had never been so drunk in his life, or so angry. He had planned to revenge himself on Frederica for her cold silences and snubs by appearing at the play with that particular bit of muslin on his arm. But somehow it had all rebounded when he caught a glimpse of her horrified face across the theater. She should not expect him to behave like a monk. The small voice of conscience telling him that she had every right to expect him to keep his amours from the public eye made him even angrier.

  He pushed open the library door and went in. His wife was lying asleep in a chair by the fire. Her small face under the blazing and flashing tiara looked very young and vulnerable.

  He stirred up the fire and threw on a shovelful of coal. The noise awoke her and she looked up into her husband’s face. He looked very handsome and debonair and she smiled at him sleepily.

  Then her eyes focussed on a stain of rouge on his cravat and her face hardened and she sat bolt upright.

  “Will you kindly explain your behavior this evening, sir?” she demanded imperiously. “And am I to expect such behavior in the future? Are you going to flaunt your lightskirts in front of me?”

  “Yes,” he said casually, tapping his fingers lightly on the bookshelves. “So long as you are content to behave like a nun, do not expect me to behave like a monk.”

  Frederica was shaking with anger. “It is as well I found out about your amours in time, my lord Duke. Only think what might have happened to me had I decided to share your bed.”

  “What are you talking about? What could happen to you?”

  “The pox,” said Frederica, clearly and distinctly.

  Shock sobered him momentarily. “I will have you know, madame, that the ladies I consort with are diamonds of the first water and, above all, clean. You have furthermore no right to know about such things.”

  “Hah!” sneered his wife. “It is just as well I do.”

  “I have no doubt that you have been well taught by your gallants,” he said. “It is as well you do not share my bed, madame. I have no taste for Haymarket ware.”

  “Nonsense!” replied his little wife, looking him up and down. “That is the only type of female you know how to deal with… that is with the exception of dear Clarissa whom, of course, you positively worship.”

  “Clarissa is a common little slut and so are you,” remarked her husband in a conversational voice.

  The hard and bitter words were building up enormous barriers between them but both were too proud to try to conciliate the other.

  The Duke weaved slightly and clutched at the mantle for support.

  “You’re bosky,” said Frederica bitterly. What had happened to the gallant and charming Captain Wright? He stood glaring down at her, the red lights from the fire glinting in his eyes.

  “On the other hand,” he said, “I may as well have a sample of what you have been giving away so freely.”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the mouth. He smelled of wine and cheap perfume.

  Frederica tore herself free and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I am leaving you, sir. You are too drunk to know what you are doing.”

  She turned towards the door and he lunged after her. She twisted, eluding his grasp, and then ran as hard as she could up the stairs. Avoiding her rooms, she ran to the top of the house and hid in one of the attics. She heard him roaring her name, she heard doors being thrown open, and then there was blessed silence.

  She found she was trembling with shock. She rose on shaky legs and made her way down to her bedroom. From the gossip at the tea tables, she had gathered that a drunken husband was a common occurence in this hard-drinking society. Women of her acquaintance seemed to cope with an elegant shrug. Men, it seemed, were not men unless they crawled home in the small hours on their hands and knees. Why, even the Prince Regent was reported to have spent his wedding night with his head in the fire-irons—although the gossips said that his mistress, Mrs. Fitzherbert, had put a sedative in his wine.

  But Frederica had considered her husband to be far above such behavior. She was bitterly disappointed in him and considered herself well out of the agonies of love. Tomorrow, her coldness would not be affected. It would be a part of her soul.

  With a cold courage, she started the next day, confident that she would be spared her husband’s presence at the breakfast table. But to her horror, he was already there and obviously waiting for her before he went out. Beau Brummell, that arbiter of fashion, had damned the masculine wear of knee breeches and swallow-tail coats for day wear since they were affected by Bonaparte and his rabble of commoners. The Duke was all the crack in a silk frogged coat lined with beaver and biscuit colored pantaloons. He was wearing his snowy cravat in the style known as Trone d’Amour—well starched and with one single horizontal dent in the middle.

  He had already breakfasted and was obviously prepared to go out.

  He knew that his little wife did not speak French so it was impossible to carry on conversation in front of the servants. He waited until her plate was filled and then with a wave of his hand, dismissed them.

  His wife’s long heavy hair had been piled on top of her head in a style that was entirely her own. Her slim, girlish figure was able to carry the current mode of gown—which was padded in the front to make the wearer look about six months pregnant—without appearing ridiculous.

  Frederica choked some toast down her dry throat and desperately wished he would go away.

  She reached forward for another piece of toast and his long thin fingers closed over her wrist. “Please look at me, Frederica,” he said in a soft voice.

  “I am truly sorry for my behavior last night. I got in with a pretty hard-drinking set at Watier’s yesterday and won quite a sum of money and the tickets to the Haymarket Theater. Sackett was drunker than I and he began to bait me about my wife’s gallants. He was hoping to hurt me and to start a quarrel with Chuffy. I told him that I was fully aware that Mr. Pellington-James was a friend of my wife’s and that I was grateful to him for squiring her when I was gone from town. He began to imply that I was a cuckold and I challenged him to a duel. Don’t worry,” he added as Frederica gave a gasp of horror. “He did not accept the challenge. I am accounted a pretty fair shot.

  “I decided to walk fr
om Watier’s to the Haymarket and the fresh air, combined with the wine I had drunk, addled my wits and I began to become furious with you, my dear. I felt that it was all your fault that I had been put in this humiliating position. I wanted to humiliate you in return. I called on a certain ladybird I used to know and begged her to accompany me. I only succeeded in humiliating myself further. I took her home and then repaired to Brook’s where I made myself further obnoxious by insulting all the Whigs. The Beau took me aside and told me there was absolutely no veritas in vino and told me to go home. I challenged him to a duel to which he replied, ‘Good God, certainly not!’ My humiliation was complete.

  “I am extremely sorry, my dear. Please forgive me.”

  Black eyes met grey ones for a long moment while poor Frederica fell more in love with her husband than ever.

  “Of course I forgive you,” she remarked truthfully. “But I would still like to know, sir, how you came to be reeking of cheap perfume and how you got that rouge on your cravat?”

  He had the grace to blush. “My… er… lady friend tried to detain me when I took her home.”

  “You are a terrible man,” said Frederica lightly.

  “It was all caused by Sackett’s jealousy of Chuffy. That Dandy set spit and fight like cats over who has the best waistcoat. By the way, did you hear what happened to poor Chuffy?”

  She shook her head and so he told her the fate of the swansdown waistcoat and made her laugh.

  “There!” he cried. “That is more like my Frederica.”

  He smiled into her eyes, those large black eyes with the little gold flecks, which held his own with such an expression of… of what? “What are your plans for the day?”

  Frederica hesitated a little. “I had planned to drive with Mr. Pellington-James but if you would rather not…”

  “No, no,” he laughed. “Chuffy is the best of men. You must forgive my jealousy of last night…”

  Frederica looked at him with a gleam of hope. Jealousy?

  “You know what men are like,” he teased, “when it comes to their wives. Like dogs with bones.”