The Duke's Dilemma: Regency Romance Menage Short Stories

by Lacoste, G. G.

  "Leave my chamber."

  "I love you."

  "Get out!" The Duchess grabbed the maid by her frail shoulders and pushed her away. Being such a thin girl, the force of the Duchess' push sent her straight out of the room. Still challenging the Duchess' decision, she attempted to enter the room a second time but the door was shut in her face and bolted.

  Rejected, the maid turned from the chamber door and trudged through the hallway with her face pointed at the floor. When she had been awakened by the sound of the Duchess arguing with the Duke, she leapt from the bed in excitement for she believed it to be her chance to win the heart of the Duchess once and for all. The two women had begun an affair several months prior, which the Duchess had instigated. She had heard rumours from several of her wealthy friends that the new maid whom she had hired was known for her sexual promiscuity and that she had embarked on several scandalous affairs with other women. The Duchess found this rumour to be quite interesting and more than a little arousing. Secretly, she had always wondered what it would be like to be with another woman. That is not to say that she was a lesbian, at least at that time. But there was something about the knowledge that such a relationship was absolutely unacceptable and forbidden, which she found extremely exciting. Despite this, the Duchess had no intention of investigating the matter further and made no plans to seduce the young maid. Of course, impulse takes over when the object of one's sexual desires is close by and the woman couldn't help but act upon these desires when Margaret bent over before her. She was bending to ignite a scented candle that rested upon the coffee table in the living room, but she also ignited something inside the Duchess, which brought her to her feet. As soon as the maid turned around, the Duchess took her face in her hands and pulled her lips to her own. It was a powerful kiss, one that the Duchess had fantasised about administering a number of times. The maid put up no fight and within minutes they were lying together, their clothes scattered on the floor and their lives changed forever.

  For several months, the Duchess and the maid met in secret. Whenever the Duke was absent from the manor, the Duchess would take her young female lover to her chamber and they would recreate their first sexual encounter. However, as time went by the Duchess became more and more fearful that their relationship would be discovered and exposed in the tabloids, which had brought many a member of royalty to their knees. Such a revelation would spell certain doom for her and for her marriage. Having married into the royal family, this was something that she could scarcely afford. For this reason, the woman summoned the maid to her chamber one autumn afternoon. Knowing that the young girl had fallen madly in love with her, the Duchess decided to wait until her husband had left the manor for there was a distinct possibility the maid would break down and scream threats of inflicting physical harm upon either the Duchess or herself.

  "Has the Duke gone away?" Margaret asked the Duchess as she entered the chamber. She was excited and aroused for she believed another session of love making to be immanent.

  "Yes, he has ventured into town to share a hot whiskey with a close friend of his."

  "How wonderful!" declared the maid before taking the Duchess in her arms. She attempted to engage the older woman in a kiss but was shoved away and told to sit on the bed.

  "My love, whatever is the matter?" the maid asked, looking up at her lover with wide eyes.

  "Margaret, I am afraid it is time I bring our relationship to a close." The young girl was shocked and did not know how to react. Being an extremely attractive woman with a perfect body, she was not used to being on this side of a broken heart.

  "Anne, I do not understand."

  "I have decided that it is immoral and insensible of me to continue this affair. I am married to a Duke and I cannot risk being caught in a sexual relationship with anybody other than my husband, least of all another woman."

  "But Anne, you adore me. You declared it yourself when we last made love. You screamed it to the heavens."

  "I have made my decision and I am sticking to it. Naturally, I would appreciate you keeping our encounters a secret."

  Finally, this conversation came to an end, as did the women's relationship, and the Duchess had spent every moment since doing all she could to avoid Margaret. Of course, this was no easy task as she was still employed as a maid at the manor and at least once a day the Duchess would have to give her some orders. When she had to do this, the two former-lovers would shy away from eye contact and mask their true feelings. This was particularly difficult for the Duchess for she not only had to keep her love hidden from those around her, but from the maid as well. She was still madly in love with Margaret, but revealing this to her would surely bring an end to their separation. On this night in the chamber, spurred on by the intense anger she was feeling towards her husband, the Duchess had come close to embracing the maid once again but had somehow managed to restrain herself. Of course, the next time she felt these urges, she would not find it quite so easy to ignore them.

  Chapter Three

  The following morning, the Duke woke up on the living room couch with a dry mouth and a headache so horribly awful that it felt Satan himself had been using his skull as a drum. He cast his mind over the events of the night before and shuddered to think of the incredible embarrassment he must have caused himself. He could not quite remember everything that had transpired, but he did have some recollection of lecturing the Prince Reagent on the nation's poverty problems. This was odd as he was not usually the kind of man to concern himself with the matters of the lower classes. However, the Duke was familiar with the old saying "a drunken mind speaks sober thoughts" and was happy to think that maybe, deep down, he cared about the poor.

  "Ah, you have arisen,” commented the Duchess as she passed by him, making as much noise as she possibly could. Her slumber had done little to sooth her anger. She was also struggling with the confusion she was experiencing regarding her feelings for the maid and the knowledge that a relationship with her was what she truly wanted. This, of course, only worsened her mood.

  "I feel as though my brain is endeavouring to jump from my head," the Duke told his wife as he dragged his carcass upright.

  "You don't have to worry about that, my dear. I assure you that your brain is already long gone."

  "Is it wise of me to ask what I said to the Prince Reagent?"

  ''Not at all, but that has never stopped you in the past."

  "Very well. Tell me, dear wife, of my actions last night."

  "Do you have any memory at all?"

  "Yes. I can remember spending a minute or two enthusiastically discussing the country's poor with the Prince Regent." The Duchess laughed a laugh that resembled something of a cackle for she found great delight in the Duke's discomfort.

  "I'm afraid it was quite a bit more than a minute, darling,” she told him with another maniacal laugh, "perhaps closer to an hour."

  "An hour?"

  "Correct. And it was not so much of a discussion as it was you drunkenly screaming your opinions into the ear of the Prince Reagent while he did all he could not to strike you in the face."

  The Duke groaned and rose to his feet. At this moment, he would have quite liked to have locked the living room door, pulled the curtains and return to the couch to sleep the day and any other days which were to follow away. However, he was a sensible man (on occasion) and was forced to accept that his fantasy was entirely unfeasible.

  "Perhaps I should send the Prince Regent a letter to explain my actions,” he said as he examined his worn face in the living room mirror.

  "Oh, I do not think that will be necessary, my dear."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I am quite certain the two empty bottles of wine which you left on his dining room table will explain your actions a great deal better than you can."

  Two empty bottles of wine? The Duke was surprised to hear he drank that much. In fact, he was a little proud of himself. Whether it had caused him to make a fool of himself or not, two
whole bottles of wine was an impressive amount for anybody to consume and still breath. After all, had the great Shakespeare himself not died from alcohol poisoning?

  "In a way," the Duke thought to himself, "I am a greater man than the immortal bard."

  The Duchess scolded the Duke a final time and exited the living room without informing him where she was going, which did not bother him any great amount. He, like most men, preferred to be alone following a night of heavy drinking for hearing others speak only served to increase the thumping in his head, especially if the other in question was his disapproving wife. He gathered himself and dragged his feet from the living room to the kitchen in order to prepare his breakfast. On most mornings, he would send for Margaret and task her with preparing his morning meal, but that involved ringing the maid's bell and the sickly man's fragile ears could not handle such an abrasive sound. He dropped two eggs into a pot of boiling water and set about toasting a slice of bread for himself. The Duke was not particularly fond of hard boiled eggs, but they took only a short amount of time to make and required little to no effort on his part. On top of that, it had been so long since he had last prepared his own breakfast that he could no longer sure of how to do it.

  As the Duke attempted to play the role of chef, the Duchess locked herself inside her chamber once again. She had spent the entire morning grappling with her feelings for Margaret and did not trust herself to be anywhere other than her own room, removed from all others. The events of the night before, and indeed the hours which preceded it, had brought her to the realisation that she was no longer in love with her husband. She had had the thought that she had fallen out of love a number of times in the past but had always managed to shove it to the back of her mind. However, the time had finally come for her to accept that her husband and she were just not compatible. Not one time in the past year had he made her laugh or smile. She could not recall the last instance in which he had invoked in her the warm feelings of comfort and satisfaction that Margaret had made her feel.

  "What am I to do?" the Duchess whispered to herself, fearful that the maid might hear her and know that she was winning their battle. "I have an unrelenting thirst for Margaret but rekindling our affair will surely bring an end to my marriage and the security which comes along with being the wife of a wealthy Duke." It is important to note that this was the first time the Duchess had entertained any thought of actually leaving her husband for the young girl. In the past, during their affair, she had never been tempted to flee and begin a new life with her lesbian lover. She was always a sensible woman during that period and knew that she would save herself a great deal of trouble by putting her husband before any other love interest.

  Another knock came to the chamber door, interrupting the Duchess' seclusion just as it had the night before. She groaned. How was she ever supposed to put the maid out of her mind if she was knocking at her chamber door whenever she was alone?

  "Be gone, Margaret!" the Duchess yelled, "I am in no mood to speak with you."

  "It is not young Margaret, madam. It is Jeremy." Jeremy was the fourth person who made the manor their home and served as the live-in butler. Unlike most butlers, he was not the son of a butler and had never sought to serve members of the upper class. In fact, for quite some time, Jeremy had been a member of the upper class, having made an impressive amount of money in the business of law. He was a close friend of the Duke and, just like he, Jeremy had a problem with his consumption of alcohol. Unlike the Duke, however, Jeremy had absolutely no control over his addiction and would find himself drinking in the public houses everyday after work. Retirement only made his problem worse as it left him with a great deal of free time, meaning he could spend every minute of every day sitting at a rotten wooden counter in a dingy public house, squandering all of the money which he had worked so hard to earn. Broke and broken, the once influential Jeremy was thrown from his house and forced to live on the street, begging those better off for money to buy food and drink, but most importantly, drink.

  For some time, Jeremy had managed to keep his downfall hidden from his friends and family simply by never telling them what was going on. Many of the friends who passed him as he lay on the streets assumed that he had fallen there after several hours of heavy drinking, which was not unusual for him. Of course when the Duke, who knew Jeremy quite a bit better than most others, stumbled upon the poor drunkard in the street, he knew something was wrong. He demanded the former-solicitor tell him the truth about his current situation and was shocked to learn of the man's demise. The Duke, who was not exactly sober himself, demanded that Jeremy pick himself up and come to stay with him and his wife at their manor. Jeremy ended up staying as a manor guest for the next two months, during which time he consumed not a drop of alcohol. Although he had overcome his troubles with drink, the ageing man had not a penny to his name. Since the day he retired, he had spent his entire savings on his drinking. For this reason, the Duke and Duchess insisted that their friend remain at the manor for as long as he needed.

  "If you so choose" the Duke told him at one point, "you may remain in our home until your dying day and not one remark shall be passed." This idea was alluring, but Jeremy was a proud man and insisted that if he were going to continue living in that behemoth of a manor, he would do so as a live-in butler. He was not willing to accept any more handouts from his friends.

  "What is it, Jeremy?" the Duchess asked from her bed, still refusing to open the chamber door.

  "There seems to be some sort of wild animal roaming the grounds. I cannot make out exactly what it is due to my poor eyesight, but I am quite certain that it will do some damage if it remains."

  "The grounds, Jeremy?"

  "Well, not precisely the grounds. It is hiding in the woods, which are located right next to the grounds. I believe it is only a matter of time before it makes its way into the estate proper. It could be dangerous."

  "Very well. Lay some traps."

  "Of course, madam." Satisfied with his orders, Jeremy left the chamber door and began to make his way outside. Despite the fact that some of the worst times of his life had happened outdoors, the old man still found a great deal of delight in the fresh air. Of course, busy streets and grey pavements would occasionally give him flashbacks to the unhappy days when he was without a home, but the green grass and wide open spaces of the manor grounds brought a great smile to his face.

  "A wild animal" the Duchess laughed to herself, "how absurd to think that any wild animal could pose a threat in this country. This is England, not Africa. We are not in the wild. Tis most likely but a pig having escaped from some poor farmer." Whatever the wild animal was, it could not be left to its own devices as it would, at the very least, empty its bowls on the manor lawn, resulting in an unpleasant experience for all involved. It would have to be caught, by trap or by hand; either way would require quite some time. It was at this moment that the Duchess was struck with an idea, which was rather wicked and unkind, but would solve her problems, at least for the time being. She ran to her chamber door and unlocked it as fast as her wrinkled hand possibly could before entering the hallway and calling out for Jeremy, who had just reached the bottom step of the stairs leading to the ground floor.

  "Yes, madam?" he replied before turning around and climbing the staircase again.

  "There is no need for you to tackle the mysterious beast."

  "Pardon me, madam?" he said with a groan, climbing stairs at his age was no easy task.

  "I would much prefer for you to set about tidying the study."

  "Tidying the study? Is that not the job of the maid?"

  "What I mean to say is, I need you to reorganise the books on the bookshelf in accordance with the first letter of each author's surname. You know, I'm sure, that Margaret is far too young and uneducated to be trusted with such a task."

  "What about the wild animal?"

  "Have Margaret deal with that. Tell her that I wish for the beast to be captured and brought to me and that s
he is not to return to the manor empty handed." She went on to explain her reasoning for assigning the maid the task of capturing the wild animal and even managed to convince Jeremy that it would be a better use of his time to alphabetise her novels, short stories and plays. Of course, none of what the Duchess said contained even the slightest hint of truth. The only reason she wanted Margaret to be out of the house for the day was because it meant she could leave her chamber and roam freely throughout her home without risk of encountering the maid and giving in to temptation. It was a plan, which at least in the mind of the Duchess, could not fail.

  Chapter Four

  "My dear Prince Regent," the Duke said aloud as he attempted to write the perfect letter of apology. "Leader of our fine nation and lifelong friend to myself and my wife. How can I begin to explain my actions on our last encounter." He paused before crumbling the sheet of paper into and tossing it into a pile with all of his previous failed attempts. He just could not get it right, he could not even being to explain his actions on their last encounter.

  "George," he began again, "Georgey." No. He tore this latest attempt into pieces. That was a far too informal manner in which to address the leader of the United Kingdom. Even during their closest period the Duke had never referred to the Prince Regent as "Georgey". By now, the Duke was beginning to suspect that he was not a greater man than William Shakespeare after all.

  "Matthew, what are you doing?" The Duke jumped. He had not expected to hear the voice of his wife for at least another couple of hours. Usually when she was mad at him, she would spend the morning scolding him and then ignore him until nightfall. He had actually grown to enjoy these days of silence and would sometimes do his best to infuriate his wife if he fancied a day or two to himself.