The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet

by Mary Balogh

  He was leading her quickly up the steps onto the balcony and across it to the French doors into the ballroom. Almost without thinking she smiled. She was on view again.

  The point was, she thought, that she would not have considered their embrace in terms of guilt or shame if he had not made her see that both were needed. It had felt right. They were betrothed, soon to be married. Attraction—physical attraction—between them had seemed desirable. Without ever thinking of it in verbal terms, she knew that she had embraced him with a feeling close to love. She had believed, naive as she was, that he had felt the same. There had been no question—surely there had not—of anything happening that might have left her ruined or with child. That was for the marriage bed. They had been standing in the conservatory.

  But it seemed that there was guilt and there was shame. Such things as physical attraction and passion were quite inappropriate between a duke and his duchess—they were acceptable only between a duke and his mistress. And of course the word “love” was probably not even in the ducal vocabulary.

  Well, then, she thought almost viciously as His Grace led her toward his mother and they all smiled as if nothing untoward had happened all evening—well, then, she would learn.

  If it was the last thing she ever did in life, she would learn.

  SHE SEEMED LESS shy today, he thought. Less shy with other people, that was. He was driving her in his curricle in Hyde Park during the fashionable hour, and she seemed in no way intimidated by the crush of people that the sunshine had brought out—not that the ton needed sunshine in order to gather for the daily ride or stroll and for the polite gossiping and ogling. Only a downpour of rain would keep them away.

  She was looking extremely lovely in a pale blue muslin dress of simple, elegant design and a cornflower-trimmed straw bonnet. Her blue parasol was the only article that was in any way fussy. She twirled it above her head as they drove along. She smiled.

  In the park she spoke to everyone who stopped to pay their respects. Unlike last evening she did not merely listen and encourage more talk with her smiles. Today she participated fully in the conversations. He knew that she was succeeding in charming the gentlemen and perhaps making the ladies faintly envious. She was far more lovely than anyone else there, after all. He did not even pause to wonder if it was partiality that led him to such a decisive conclusion.

  He had been foolish to worry that she would just not be able to learn in time what she would need to know to be his duchess. There would be a great deal more, of course, than merely to look fashionable and to converse with ease and charm. But those things certainly helped. And if she could learn those so quickly and so thoroughly, then surely she could learn everything else too, given a little more time.

  He was pleased with her. He was proud of her.

  And he was uncomfortable with her and still ashamed of himself. He had scarcely slept during what had remained of the night after he took her and his mother home from the ball.

  If the cessation of the music in the ballroom had not somehow penetrated his consciousness when it had, he thought, he might not have brought that embrace to an end until it had reached its logical conclusion. He had been drawing up the skirt of her gown, bunching it in handfuls about her hips when he had realized what was happening—and what had already happened.

  If one thing had characterized his life for the past eleven years, and even longer, it was control. He had always felt fully in control of other people and events and—most important—of himself. Last evening had bewildered him. He had insulted her right at the start in a way that was inexcusable, especially since he had not even realized it until she had pointed it out. And later, he had insulted her in such an unpardonable manner that he had shuddered over it all night and all morning—he had blamed her for his own loss of control.

  The trouble was that his dream—his long abandoned dream—had leapt to life for a few mindless minutes while he held her and kissed her. For those few minutes she had been that dream of love. She had felt like the other half of his soul—the half he had always known was missing, the half he had always yearned to find.

  It had been a ridiculous feeling. All that had happened was that he had lusted after her, his own betrothed. He had behaved unpardonably.

  And so today he was uncomfortable with her. And today her bright charm seemed more like a shield than anything else. She talked to him incessantly on the way to and from the park—about the weather, about the flowers she had received from various gentlemen who had danced with her last evening, including his orchids, about the kindness Lady Francis Kneller had shown her last evening and the amusement she had provided, about a hundred and one topics that held back the silence between them.

  Silence, when there had been silence between them in his carriage during that journey, had been a comfortable thing. No longer. Not that either of them put it to the test today.

  “Miss Gray,” he said when he had lifted her down from his curricle and led her inside and refused his mother’s invitation to come upstairs for tea, “I told you last evening that I would not ask your pardon for what was unpardonable. I have changed my mind. Will you forgive me?”

  “Of course, Your Grace,” she said, smiling warmly. “I believe you were right to put at least part of the blame on me, though you were gallant enough to retract what you had said. I am gradually learning the rules, you see. I hope to have them all by heart by the time of our nuptials.”

  She offered him her gloved hand, and he took it and raised it to his lips.

  “Until this evening, then,” he said, “and the theater.”

  “I am looking forward to it,” she said.

  He knew what was wrong as soon as he stepped out of the house and climbed back to the high seat of his curricle. Although she had smiled and although her voice had been warm, there had been no gold flecks in her eyes. Strange, ridiculous notion. How could eyes change?

  But hers had. There had been a certain blankness in their smiling depths.

  11

  HE HAD BECOME TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE—SHE WAS uncomfortably aware of that realization during the three weeks leading up to her wedding—two quite distinct people.

  When she was alone—but how rarely she was alone during those weeks—and during her dreams at night she was Stephanie Gray, vicar’s daughter. She was the girl and young woman who had kept house for her father. She was the general favorite of the villagers and even of the squire’s family. She visited everyone and was a friend of everyone, young and old, rich and poor alike. She took gifts of baking and needlework to the sick and elderly. She refused a marriage offer from Tom Reaves, the squire’s only son, though they had been playmates all through their childhood and friends in more recent years. She refused because she knew he had offered out of pity, for her father had died and left her poor and she was compelled to seek employment elsewhere. Friendship seemed not a strong enough basis for marriage.

  When she was alone and when she dreamed, her life at the vicarage became idealized. It was always summer there. The sun always shone. The flowers in the garden always bloomed. The villagers always smiled. Tom always seemed a little dearer than just a friend. And his sisters seemed more like her sisters too.

  When she was alone, she liked who she was. She was the woman her parents had raised her to be. She was the woman she wanted to be. She was herself.

  But when she was not alone—most of the time during those weeks—she was the betrothed of the Duke of Bridgwater. She dressed the part, always expensively elegant. And she lived the part, every word, every action, every reaction consciously chosen. There was no spontaneity at all in this Stephanie. She seldom made a mistake. After the gentle scolding meted out by the duchess following that first ball—“Everyone feels the occasional need for solitude, Stephanie. But a duchess recognizes that she is a public person. She learns to live without solitude.” —after that there were no more scoldings and only the occasional reminder. Like the time she apologized and smiled too warmly at
a milliner’s assistant who had patiently taken out more than a dozen bonnets from their hat boxes only to find that she had not after all made a single sale—“A duchess never apologizes for giving a servant work, Stephanie.”

  With her betrothed she behaved as a future wife should behave. Never again would he have cause to compare her to a whore—though he had stopped himself from using that word at the Marquess of Hayden’s ball, she knew it was the word he had almost said. She conversed with him when they were alone together on any genteel topic that leapt to mind. When they were not alone, she gave her attention to other people. No one would ever accuse her of clinging to the coattails of her husband.

  He did not kiss her again during those weeks, except for her hand. Had he asked for another kiss, she would have offered her lips while keeping her hands and her body—and her emotions—to herself. When they were married, she would offer her body. But only as a genteel wife would. She would offer herself for his pleasure—never her own—though she knew that he would probably get most of that elsewhere. Most important, she would offer herself as a bearer for his legitimate offspring. She would give him his heir. Her Grace had already told her that this would be her primary duty.

  She would give him a son, God willing, she thought. A life in exchange for a life. She would give him a son and heir, and perhaps then she would feel it possible to take back her own life. Perhaps she would feel that she had repaid the huge debt she owed him.

  Perhaps … Oh, perhaps one day she could be herself again. Or was self always lost in marriage? Even when one did not owe one’s life to one’s husband, one became his property after marriage. All that one possessed became his.

  No, that was not true in her case. He had insisted in the marriage settlement he had made with Mr. Watkins and Cousin Horace that Sindon Park and all her inheritance was to remain hers. He had been kind to her even in that—unbelievably kind.

  She was constantly aware of his kindness. Had she merely owed him her life, she might have come to hate him during those weeks. She might have rebelled, despite herself. But in saving her, he had been kind to her. And after saving her, he had continued kind. And had given up his own freedom in order to take her safely home.

  When she was not alone, she was the person she had been trained to be by her future mother-in-law. She was the person she had chosen to become, because of an obligation that lay heavily on her. But she felt like a stranger to herself.

  Only occasionally and all too briefly did she break free.

  They were at the Royal Academy art gallery one afternoon in company with Lord and Lady George Munro and the Earl and Countess of Greenwald, her future in-laws. Her arm was drawn through the duke’s. They were all sedately viewing the crowded tiers of paintings and commenting on their various merits and demerits. Stephanie judged with her emotions. If a painting lifted her spirits, she liked it. She did not try to analyze her feelings.

  But His Grace smiled when she explained this to him. “Then you miss a whole area in which you might exercise your mind,” he said. “You do it with books, but not with paintings, Miss Gray? You surprise me.” And he went on to analyze a Gainsborough landscape she had admired in such a manner that she was enthralled and felt that she had simply not seen the painting at all before.

  “Oh,” she said, “and I thought it was merely pretty. How foolish I feel.”

  “I must confess,” he said, “that I react to music much as you do to painting. I suppose sometimes we need to allow our intellects to rest in order that we may merely enjoy.”

  She smiled at him.

  And then beyond him, she spotted two couples standing before a canvas, absorbed in viewing it. Her eyes fixed on them and widened. It could not be—but it was. She forgot everything but them. She withdrew her arm from the duke’s, took a few hurried steps across the gallery, and stopped.

  “Miriam?” she said uncertainly. “Tom?”

  She had not seen them for six years. For a moment she thought she must have been mistaken. But when all four people turned their heads to look inquiringly at her, she saw that she had not. Tom Reaves stood before her—and Miriam, his sister, the one closest to Stephanie in age—looking hardly any different at all than when she had last seen them.

  “Stephie?” Miriam questioned, her eyes growing as wide as saucers. “Stephanie?”

  And then they were in each other’s arms, hugging and laughing and exclaiming.

  “Steph?” Tom was saying, loudly enough to be heard above them. “Good Lord!”

  He caught her up in a bear hug, swinging her off her feet and around in a complete circle. She was laughing helplessly.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “You look as fine as fivepence—as sevenpence.”

  “I cannot believe it!”

  All three of them spoke, or rather yelled, at once. All three laughed.

  “I cannot believe it,” Stephanie said again. “To meet my dearest friends again, and in London of all places. How very wonderful!”

  “Steph, you look … like a duchess,” Tom said, his eyes sweeping over her from head to toe.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Miriam asked again. “You are supposed to be in the north of England, teaching. What a fortunate coincidence to run into you here, Stephie.”

  “We are here for a month of sightseeing,” Tom said. “With our spouses, Steph. This is my wife, Sarah.” He smiled at the young lady standing beside him. “And Miriam’s husband, Perry Shields. Stephanie Gray, my love. She grew up close to us at the vicarage. The best female cricketer it has ever been my misfortune to know. She had a formidable bowling arm.”

  They all laughed merrily. And then the two couples looked inquiringly beyond Stephanie’s shoulder. She was brought back to reality with a sickening jolt. Oh dear, she thought. She had abandoned him in the middle of the gallery and had proceeded to shriek and laugh like a hoyden—or a country bumpkin—with people who were strangers to him. She had hugged Miriam with unbecoming enthusiasm. She had allowed Tom to sweep her right off her feet and swing her around.

  The Duke of Bridgwater was looking at her with raised eyebrows when she turned.

  “Oh.” She felt herself flushing. And then the part of her that no longer did anything impulsively or spontaneously felt the awkwardness of a dilemma. If one should meet an acquaintance while in company with someone else, the duchess had taught her just a few days before, one ought to avoid introducing the two people unless permission has been granted beforehand by the socially superior of the two. Thus one avoids putting that person into the regrettable situation of having to acknowledge an unwanted acquaintance.

  But she had no choice in the matter now. He had followed her across the gallery room, as his sister and brother had not. That meant, surely, that he wished to be presented. Or did it merely mean that he had come in the hope of preventing her from making a further spectacle of herself?

  “Your Grace,” she said, “may I present Mr. and Mrs. Shields and Mr. and Mrs. Reaves? Miriam and Tom are dear friends from my girlhood.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment of the introductions.

  “May I present His Grace, the Duke of Bridgwater?” she said, looking at her friends. Their faces registered an almost embarrassing degree of surprise.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” the duke said. “You are in town for long?”

  “For ten more days, Your Grace,” Tom said. “We have come to see the sights. The ladies have come also to shop.”

  “Oh, and the gentlemen too,” Miriam said, “though they hate to admit it.”

  “Perhaps,” the duke said, “you can be persuaded to extend your stay by a few days. Miss Gray and I are to be married in two weeks’ time. Yet it seems that the guest list consists almost entirely of my relatives and friends.”

  Miriam’s eyes had widened still further if that was possible.

  “Oh, Stephie,” she said, “is this true? I am so happy for you. May we, Perry?” She look
ed eagerly at her husband.

  “Will you like it, my love?” Tom was asking his wife at the same moment. “Shall we stay?”

  It was all arranged within the next couple of minutes, before His Grace took Stephanie’s arm in a firm clasp and led her back to their companions, who were discreetly viewing another portrait, their backs to the other group. Miriam and her husband and Tom and his wife were to attend the wedding. The duke had asked for their direction—they were staying at a hotel not frequented by the elite of the beau monde—and had promised that an official invitation would be sent there the same day.

  Foolishly, although they went to Gunter’s for ices after leaving the gallery and then walked home so that there was all the time in the world for conversation and even for some private words since the six of them did not all walk abreast in the street, Stephanie talked determinedly on a number of topics, but did not once mention the meeting with her friends.

  She felt a little like crying. It was almost as if her dreams of her youth had conjured up Miriam and Tom. She felt a huge nostalgia for those days, for her parents, for the vicarage, for the simplicity and happiness of her first twenty years.

  But she felt embarrassed too. She had forced the duke into an acquaintance that was not of his choosing. By describing Miriam and Tom as her dearest friends, she had perhaps made him feel obliged to issue the invitation to their wedding. Surely, he could not want them there. Although of gentle birth, they did not move in ton circles.

  And she felt unhappy at the implied snobbery of her embarrassment. Was she ashamed of her friends? No, of course she was not. They were most dear to her because they had filled her childhood with friendship and happiness. She was merely concerned that they would be treated with condescension and even perhaps downright contempt at her wedding. And yet even that thought suggested uncomfortably that she was perhaps ashamed of them. Would she have preferred it if they had refused, if they had used their planned departure for home as an excuse not to attend?