Lady Adventuress 01 - His Wayward Duchess

by Daphne du Bois

  Her mother had barely had time to arrange with confectioners and a seamstress! She did however have her way about the marriage being conducted properly. Lady Millforte would not have seen one of her daughters married at a way-house or even her front parlour.

  Holly would have preferred the parlour, for it would have saved her from some of the endless speculation that had accompanied the marriage – how had the dull Miss Millforte landed such a husband?

  Feeling chilly in the grand entrance hall of Pontridge Abbey, she risked a glance at Strathavon, Sylvester, as she had begun to call him in her secret heart. He was caught up in some serious discussion with his groundskeeper and did not notice. He had not even taken off his greatcoat. The coat made him look even taller and more dashing…

  “Pardon me, Your Grace,” said a young woman, startling Holly out of her reverie with a title to which she was not even a little accustomed. “My name is Nancy, and I’m to be your personal maid – shall I show you to your apartments?”

  Nancy had friendly brown eyes, and she seemed a little nervous. Holly felt a sudden kinship with her.

  This drew the duke’s attention.

  “No doubt, my dear, you will wish to rest,” Strathavon said, his eyes scanning Holly’s face as though looking for signs of the vapours.

  “I…no, only to change out of this gown,” she said, not wishing to appear a fainting sort of creature.

  “I will arrange a bath, and lay out a fresh gown for you, my lady,” Nancy said.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Holly looked over at Strathavon, who nodded encouragingly.

  “I shall see you for a brief supper when you are ready,” he said, his attention already returning to his steward.

  Holly smiled at Strathavon, and allowed herself to be led upstairs into the duchess’s grand chambers, which showed every sign of hasty cleaning. Obviously, the housekeeper had not received word of his lordship’s nuptials until the very last minute.

  Tired, and uncertain, Holly felt very much out of her depth – she had no notion of how a duchess ought to conduct herself in the day-to-day duties with which she would now be faced, and the reality of this was only just hitting her.

  Holly had always had a happy, comfortable existence under the eaves of her father’s house. She had shared a bedroom with her sisters, but this was generally more fun than vexing – a little corner of the house all their own.

  And though their mama complained about the droughts on the third floor, the house always felt warm and lived-in.

  Pontridge Abbey was a marvellous building: the kind Holly would have been delighted to visit, but it seemed a terribly unhomely place to live. It was very sad that the duke had no surviving family who might have added warmth to the elegant pile.

  Suddenly, Holly wanted nothing more than to call quits to the whole thing and go home, but that was impossible. Not only because it would have caused an appalling scandal, but because the new Duchess of Strathavon was hopelessly, absolutely, in love with her impassive duke.

  *

  The promised bath was warm and relaxing, nearly lulling Holly to sleep. The water smelled of lavender and she felt the day’s troubles melt away as her muscles relaxed in the water. She was overcome by a wave of tiredness, and would have been content to remain there for ever.

  Unfortunately, the hot water soon began to cool and she was forced to climb out of the copper tub. As she sat in front of the cheval glass while Nancy brushed out her long hair, Holly’s eyes began to close again.

  “Oh dear, I think the day has finally caught up with me. There has been such a lot of new things...”

  She glanced around the grand bedroom again. It looked inviting and cosy in the candlelight.

  “It is a very marvellous house, isn’t it, your ladyship?” Nancy ventured shyly. “I have only just found this situation, and at first I couldn’t but feel overwhelmed by it. And you have had a wedding also. So it is all very exciting. It’s nice to have a lady in the house.”

  Holly blinked at this. The show of enthusiasm at her arrival told her that there had to be some existing expectation of what having a lady in the house meant. And doubtless she was not the kind of lady they were expecting.

  She wouldn’t even know where to begin, come morning: a duchess, presumably, swanned about the house in a delicate French gown and played the pianoforte in the parlour. She was not used to frippery: her gowns had been comfortable and serviceable much more than they’d been delicate or elaborate.

  And why would they want her to swan around?

  It begged the question of why it was that Strathavon had chosen her out of a whole bevy of wealthier, prettier, better-born debutantes: the kind that wore the right dresses and said the right things.

  Holly had never received any sort of education in the subtle and delicate art of snaring a husband: her mama had always been too preoccupied with botany for any such nonsense.

  As a result, Holly had spent her mercifully short Season feeling inadequate, as though everyone else had read some rule book to which she had not been privy.

  She had even made a complete fool of herself by lecturing the handsome Duke of Strathavon about orchard-planting and other unbearably dull domestic things.

  Their first meeting had been a complete accident. She had been speaking to Miss Trent, the daughter of a baronet, and her coterie of friends, when the duke approached to greet the lady and ask after her father.

  “Miss Millforte, His Grace of Strathavon,” said Miss Trent absently, while smiling at the duke.

  Holly’s eyes had met his dark blue gaze for a brave, thrilling second and she felt something within her begin to sing like a voice out of one of Mr Handel’s oratorios. Then the duke had looked away to respond to a question from another lady, but the strange sense of floating clung to Holly, regardless.

  Most unreasonably, she had wanted to move closer to him, possibly even venture to speak to him…

  The other young ladies had laughed and fluttered their fans in the kind of shameless flirtation Holly could never hope to imitate, because she’d only have looked absurd. Oh, how she’d wished she could be as disarming as they!

  The ladies had spoken of poetry and fancies, but when Holly opened her mouth, she’d only managed to make a spectacle of herself again, by responding to the duke’s casual remark about renovating Pontridge Abbey.

  “But, surely, my lord, it would make more sense simply to refurbish the chairs, instead of all the trouble of ordering new ones?”

  She had wanted to melt out of sight right after. She wished most fervently that she might have said something witty instead, because what debutante speaks of chairs to the wealthiest peer in the Realm? Of chairs at all, really.

  “Refurbish?” The duke had paused a moment to look at her then, really look at her, instead of the casually quizzing expression he had worn when speaking to the group of ladies as a whole.

  It might have been the gravity of his look that made her love him then and there – the slight line that had formed between his eyes, as though he couldn’t entirely make heads nor tails of her. She’d longed to run a hand over his face and smooth out the creases.

  “Yes, you need only summon a seamstress.”

  Strathavon had nodded. Then he asked her a few more brisk questions and she’d replied promptly – all the while cursing herself for a fool. She had wanted very much to melt into the wallpaper – now he would think of her only as the woman who knew about chairs and drapery.

  Which was possibly even worse than if he never thought of her at all.

  The duke had looked at her face curiously and Holly had felt sure that he’d been rendered speechless by the absolute dullness of her conversation. He had appeared to find her bewildering, passing strange compared to the other ladies at Almack’s.

  She couldn’t really blame him. In fashionable London, Holly was an anomaly, just like her name, for the niceties of society had never been a strength of hers. Nor had cleverness, she supposed, or bea
uty.

  The best that could be said of her was that she could make a good wife to someone some day: her instinct for domestic management was impeccable, her sewing neat and functional, and her head cool.

  She could run a household like the Admiralty the royal navy, but what good was that? She couldn’t have hoped to compete with the French gowns or delicate manners of the other ladies. She was not, nor would she ever be, an original, but oh how she had longed to be.

  She had been truly surprised later in the evening, when Strathavon solicited her for a country dance. She had done her very best to appear demure and witty, and she’d tried not to miss any steps, but though her dancing had always been good, she could not seem to say much that was either witty or demure.

  Holly, who had always disliked finding herself at sea, had therefore done a very sorry job of navigating the tricky waters of the Season. She supposed that she must have been nervous – and her usual reaction to nerves had always been to observe quietly from the back until she had got the gist of the thing.

  Two weeks later, he made an offer for her, in the garden of the townhouse which her mother had taken for the Season.

  “I shall endeavour to make you happy in this life – just as your mama’s injunctions would have me do,” the duke had said with a smile.

  And Holly could not then have imagined anything more perfect.

  Strathavon had gone to the Archbishop at Lambeth to acquire a special license and they were married not long after the engagement had been announced in the journals.

  *

  “I hope that your chambers are to your liking? They have been unoccupied since my mother’s day, and I fear they may have been somewhat neglected,” Strathavon said from his place at the dinner table.

  The dining hall was a very vast room, lit by a roaring fire, but it felt silly to be using it when it was just the two of them.

  “Oh, yes, thank you. Mrs Tomkins has done a wonderful job preparing it for me.”

  Strathavon nodded. “She is a very capable woman, though she was undeniably a bother when I was a boy – never did take well to finding frogs in the good porcelain jugs.”

  Holly couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her. When she met Strathavon’s eyes, he looked somewhat gratified, as though he had been unsure how to go on with her either. Could it be that the fashionable duke was as lost in this new arrangement as she was? Surely not.

  She took a sip of her wine to distract herself from this dangerous way of thinking.

  “Frogs? Did you mean to scare her?”

  “Not at all! Merely to house our new pets. Max, my brother, was a genius at catching the things.”

  This mention of the late relative, however, seemed a misstep, and silence once again descended over the dinner table.

  Holly supposed he was still privately mourning the loss of his brother. She couldn’t imagine ever losing one of hers. She wanted more than anything to find some way to help him alleviate his pain.

  Now that she was a married lady in command of her own household, Holly wondered what she ought to do about the little inconvenience of love.

  Love was a complex thing – much more so than she had ever expected it to be. It would have been so much easier if she could have loved someone else, or at least if she could stop herself from loving Strathavon.

  Society would not frown at her half so much for discreetly taking a paramour as they would for being doe-eyed over a cool and remote husband who had nothing but polite regard for her.

  “My brothers were much more in the way of catching spiders to frighten the governess,” she said at last, determined to tell him stories of her own family, to soften the obvious gap in his. “She couldn’t abide spiders. Papa was never so out of temper with them as after he’d had to sit through yet another audience with her. He kept having to increase her wages.”

  “Yes, they did seem a very spirited lot,” the duke said, tasting his plum pudding.

  “They are. I am not sure how many more Millforte boys Eton can be persuaded to accept.”

  When the footmen came forward to clear the plates, the duke rose and helped Holly to her feet. His eyes, dark and hooded, drew her in and she felt her breath catch, suddenly thinking about wedding nights.

  They made their way slowly up to her chambers, and Holly felt herself grow a little more nervous, shy and excited with every step.

  Was she to ask the duke to come in? Would he come in of his own volition?

  They stopped at the door, his eyes burning into hers and her pulse pounding at the nearness of him and his masculine scent. Bergamot, she thought with a shiver.

  He reached out and took one of her slightly-trembling hands in his large, strong one – his long, elegant fingers dwarfed hers, made her hand look delicate and fragile. Strathavon ran a thumb over the sensitive skin of her wrist.

  Then, he raised the hand to his lips, and kissed it in a charming old-fashioned gesture, her eyes locked on his.

  “Well then, you must be tired from the journey. I shall bid you a good night, my dear.” With those words and a slight bow, the duke was gone.

  Holly watched him go, trembling and blinking away the tears that suddenly threatened. Her eyes ached.

  Had she done something wrong? She knew by now that he did not love her, but for a moment she had glimpsed something in his eyes – some strange attraction. Obviously, she had been gravely mistaken. But did he find her so repulsive that he could not even bring himself to kiss her, much less touch her?

  She wanted to call after him. To ask him directly. But that wasn’t the done thing and he would only have been scandalised. So she went into her suddenly lonely room, dismissed Nancy and got into her bed. She curled up under the sheets, and hugged the pillow as though it would bring her some comfort in this latest rejection.

  By morning, the whole house would know that the duke found his new wife thoroughly repellent. And she would just have to raise her chin and go on, because that was what ladies of breeding did. But now she was alone and it was dark: she could permit herself to cry.

  When she found that could cry no more, Holly stared up at the plastered ceiling overhead, taking comfort in the dark room. Her eyes felt raw and her body drained. She listened to the sounds of the house, but there were none except for the sort of creaking made by old houses and the wind picking up outside her window. It was late and most of the household had already retired to their beds, taking the sounds of the house with them.

  *

  Early the next morning, the duke went riding out to inspect the grounds, and Holly could not have joined him even if he had asked her, because she had never really learned to sit a horse very well. Her father had never kept much of a stables.

  Instead, she stood alone at her window and admired his posture, which even she recognised as magnificent. His dark hair and stark, narrow cheek bones made him look every inch the handsome aristocrat, powerful and commanding, as he easily moved his horse into a gallop.

  When he had faded from sight, she sighed and returned her gaze to the fire, lost in a daydream of what might have been if the world were a kinder place.

  Holly wondered if they would live in such silence forever. She had always been used to light and conversation, and she had felt certain that that would be the life that awaited her with the duke. The formality was stifling, but she did not know what there was to be done about it.

  Sir Jeffrey Millforte had been surprised to find himself applied to for his middle daughter, whom he thought lovely, but whom the world would see as too clever and plain. Especially since the offer had been made by a prominent a peer of the realm, who appeared very determined to lead Holly to the altar.

  Still, the duke was a man of good character and considerable wealth: the match would set Holly up comfortably for life. Ordinary girls with hardly any dowry were unlikely to ever make so fine an alliance. And the connection would be most fortuitous in marrying off Holly’s sisters.

  Sir Jeffrey was land-poor and content wit
h his lot. There was land enough to provide for his family comfortably and he was relieved not to be bothering with the obligations of a vast fortune.

  He was by nature of a sanguine and studious disposition, and after completing his studies at the University of Paris, he had married a lady whose interests matched his perfectly.

  The idea of Holly becoming a duchess had been so alien both to the baronet and his wife that neither had ever thought to prepare her for such an eventuality.

  Strathavon’s friends, she felt sure, had found her greatly wanting as the bride of the wealthy duke. She had met a few during their short betrothal, though none had come to the wedding breakfast.

  Upon her engagement, her mama, who generally considered social intricacies a foolish waste of time, had taken her aside to impart some of the wisdom her own mother had once given her.

  “You are going, my dear daughter, into a world in which you will be entirely a stranger, for you have not yet truly ventured to be a part of it, and you cannot know your way. There will be many disadvantages in your path, for you have neither the wealth, the accomplishments, nor the polish of the other young women. I tell you this not to be cruel, but because I wish to warn you – no one had expected that you would embark on such a life and it seemed unnecessary to crowd your head with all that nonsense. But here we are, and you must make the best of it, despite lacking the knowledge a lady of great fortune ought to possess.”

  She had paused a moment to regard Holly steadily over her spectacles, as though checking that she was listening.

  Then, Lady Millforte went on. “From now on, study and the observation of those around you will be your best recourse – but take care not to emulate the undesirable persons that so inevitably turn up even in the highest echelons of society. You will be mistress of your gentleman’s household – but I believe that is one duty to which you will take most naturally.”

  “Yes,” said Holly, thinking how dull her mother made her sound.

  “You must cultivate a learned, calm deportment and show rectitude in your every word and deed. And you must ever beware the fashionable rakes who would see such a fresh face as yours merely as a target for some cruel prank: beware the sweet nothings they will whisper in your ears and never tread the treacherous path of infamy.”